


On the Lam

by MaplePaizley, thewhiskerydragon



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bonnie & Clyde, F/M, Gen, Great Depression, Guns, Kidnapping, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-04-04 12:12:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 59,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14019987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaplePaizley/pseuds/MaplePaizley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhiskerydragon/pseuds/thewhiskerydragon
Summary: The Bonnie and Clyde AU that literally no one asked for.





	1. The Abduction, Part One

**Author's Note:**

> We managed to crank something else out before our fun (short, week-long-ish) hiatus starts tomorrow!

Natasha had never been fond of waiting, and now was no exception. It wasn’t the heat or the humidity or even the incessant chatter of the other people in line at the bank, but the boredom of the whole situation that was driving her mad. She was too familiar with this room—its contents held no new surprises for her wandering eyes to fix upon, no curious new sights for her to see and point out. Like the rest of town, it was as dull as a sepia photograph and just as colorless.

Sonya, as always, seemed to have no inclination to chat, nor could Natasha pick out and latch onto any idle threads of conversation in the clamor and bustle around her when every voice blended together into an indistinct blur. Instead, her eyes kept flicking back to the young couple ahead of them in line. It was rude to stare, but she didn’t recognize them, which automatically designated them as something of a curiosity.

Even in the stagnant September air, the woman wore a fur bolero and gloves. Her hair was black and bobbed, outrageously curled in a way that would have given Marya a heart attack, and with her red lipstick and penciled-in eyebrows, she looked like she had stepped straight out of a Hollywood film. No women here were that fashionable or interesting. She must have come from out of town, then.

The man waiting with her was no less striking, albeit in a very different way. Natasha could see the way his eyes glittered with mirth, even with his hat tilted low on his forehead, and though he clearly wasn’t much older than his companion, his beard was shot through with silver, but oddly enough, it made him look sophisticated instead of aged. In his three-piece suit and tie—matched to the color of the woman’s dress, Natasha realized, and made a mental note to do the same with Andrei the next time they went out together—he looked equally as glamorous as she did.

Then the woman whispered something in her companion’s ear and he laughed, draping an arm around her waist. Were they married? They certainly seemed it, though she was too far away to discern the gleam of a wedding band.

And because at any given moment there were a million different universes going on in Natasha’s mind, she decided that they must have been a married couple, and she imagined the husband doing crossword puzzles on a Monday morning, pensively bent over the kitchen table while the wife made him a coffee. He probably wore reading glasses, and those bushy brows of his would draw together in consternation if a word ever escaped him, and he would gnaw on the end of his pencil like she had seen Andrei do a million times. And then the wife would glide back over to the table with his coffee and the word in question, and he would be embarrassed that he hadn’t thought of it first, and she would laugh and leave lipstick kisses all over his forehead, and all would be well.

Natasha pushed down the pang of longing that welled up as her mind ran through this little fantasy. Andrei was only at work, and she was being silly, but she already missed him. The excitement of the wedding hadn’t faded yet. She was still learning how to be a wife, still realizing how much one person could change her entire world.  

“Natasha?”

The world snapped back into focus around her, and Natasha turned to Sonya with a soft “Hm?”

“You were staring,” she said, vaguely bemused. “Daydreaming again?”

Natasha blushed.

Sonya smiled and rolled her eyes. “Can you try to keep your head out of the clouds for five minutes?”

“I can’t help it!” she said. “Once my mind starts drifting there’s nothing I can do to help it.” She gestured towards the couple, ignoring the way Sonya tried to swat her hand away. “Aren’t you curious at all about them? What they’re like?”

“Tasha, stop, or they’re going to notice you gawking at them,” said Sonya. She flushed a bright red as the man caught her eye and winked at her.

Natasha laughed despite herself at Sonya’s scandalized expression. “You’re too serious for your own good.”

“At least one of us is.”

Natasha stuck her tongue out. “Life’s too short to worry all the time.”

After that, the conversation died down, and so did Natasha’s good mood. The line seemed to move slower and slower with each passing minute, and they trailed close behind the couple as if they could make it go faster simply by willing it.

“Perhaps we ought to come back another day,” Sonya said, eyeing the stretch of the queue.

Natasha sighed. “I really need to cash these cheques. Andrei asked me to.”

“He coulda done it himself if he needed them that badly. We’re wasting a perfectly good Saturday waiting here.”

“I don’t mind.” She rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I kinda like it. Makes me feel useful.”

“Better than sitting around and knitting all day or whatever it is wives do at home.”

Natasha shook her head. “You won’t understand until you have a husband.”

“God forbid,” she murmured, raising her eyebrows.

“It’s worth it for Andrei. I don’t mind doing it because he _appreciates_ me for it.” Her eyes gleamed mischievously. “You know, he gets all grouchy like you, sometimes. I like making him smile. _That_ makes it all worth it.”

“I’m sure it does.”

“It’s true! I’ll bet _they’d_ agree with me.” She nodded in the direction of the couple.

Sonya grimaced and her cheeks went pink. “Don’t be so loud. You’re making a scene.”

Natasha ignored her, tapped on the woman’s shoulder, and asked, “I’m sorry to pry, but are you two newlyweds?”

The woman turned at the sound of her voice with a bright smile. Her companion was a little slower on the uptake, and only raised his head when she tugged on his sleeve. “Why, yes we are, as a matter of fact,” she said, and latched onto his arm. “We just got married a month ago.”

“Still on our honeymoon,” said the husband.

Natasha was instantly smitten. “Oh, how sweet!” she cried, clasping her hands together beneath her chin.

Sonya shot her a dry look and busied herself with the hem of her blouse.

“It’s the best decision I ever made,” the wife said. She gave her husband’s hand a squeeze. “I don’t have a clue what I would do without him.”

The husband laughed. “Don’t listen to her. It’s the other way ’round.”

Sonya, tactless as always, wrinkled her nose incredulously and said, “You came _here,_ of all places, for your honeymoon?”

“Don’t be rude,” Natasha whispered.

“Just asking!”

“We’re city folk,” the wife explained. “From Chicago. It’s so damn noisy there.”

“ _So_ noisy,” said the husband.

“But we think it’s so much nicer out here. No cars honking all the time, no busy streets”—her smile brightened—“and people actually stop and say hello to you!”

“Next!” called the teller.

The husband detached himself from the wife’s arm and placed his hand on the small of her back. “Looks like it’s our turn, sweetheart.”

She rolled her eyes. “About time. My lipstick’s gonna melt off if we wait much longer.”

“It was lovely meeting you,” Natasha said.

“You are such a nosy little sap,” said Sonya as the couple turned back towards the teller.

Natasha shrugged with a dreamy smile. “Marriage is special. And they were such a darling couple, don’t you think?”

“They seemed nice enough. Wearing a coat in this weather, though, _that’s_ something else.”

“She looked so _glamorous_ though! I wonder if everyone from the city dresses like—”

_BANG._

Natasha ducked instinctively, covering her head with her hands. She heard screaming, and the patrons by the counter dove for cover beneath the ledge. Drywall and dust rained down over their heads. When she looked back up again, once the ringing in her ears had died down, there was a hole in the ceiling that hadn’t been there before, and smoke was rising in hot curlicues from the barrel of the gun the husband had drawn, which even more definitely hadn’t been there before.  

“This is a robbery!” he barked. “Nobody make a move, or the next one goes between your ears.”

And with that, Natasha’s little fantasyland cracked and shattered like the crystal bowl she had once dropped in the kitchen.

Patrons crowded themselves against the wall and behind the counters, but Natasha found her legs frozen to the spot where she and Sonya were standing, not even a yard away from the gunman. Would he shoot her if she ran for cover? Ducked out of the way? Impossible to tell, and because she had no desire to wind up dead, she stayed where she was even as her knees threatened to give out beneath her.

The gunman turned to his wife. “The doors.”

She nodded and strode to the front windows, pulling a pistol out of her purse. It looked so out-of-place in her dainty, manicured hands. But then she assumed a firing position and tensed her finger on the trigger with such natural ease that any doubts about her marksmanship vanished instantaneously.

“Good,” the gunman said. “Time?”

Her eyes darted to her watch. “You’re still fine. Make it snappy.”

He turned back to the teller, leveling his gun at the counter. “Alright, sweetheart,” he said drily. “You look like a clever girl. I’m gonna assume you probably know the drill.” He dropped an empty briefcase on the counter. “Get to it, now.”

The teller, whose face had gone very pale, nodded and went to work at the safe behind the desk.

The wife’s head perked up. “I hear sirens. Someone must have heard you shoot.”

Natasha’s breath caught in her throat. 

_Andrei_ …

“Shit,” said the gunman. He turned back to the teller and said, “Alright, chop chop, lady. We’ve gotta roll out of here.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I—”

“We don’t have _time_ ,” the wife hissed.

The gunman slammed his fist against the counter, so loudly that the teller let out a petrified scream. “I said hurry it up!”

“The cops’ll be here soon,” she said, and snatched the half-filled briefcase off the ledge. “We need to go. Now.”

He grabbed after the case, but she held it away.

“Just gimme a few more minutes.”

“No. They’re getting closer.”

Suddenly, Andrei burst through the door, flanked by three other officers. Natasha’s heart leapt into her throat. Andrei was here. She was safe, she was going home, these awful people would go away, and everything would be alright.

But then the gunman swore under his breath, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her in front of him. She cried out and dug her heels into the ground, but his grip was tight and unforgiving. Natasha saw Andrei freeze in his tracks immediately. His hand drifted to his gun.

“No, please—!”

“Nobody shoot,” the gunman growled. “You fire, she gets it first.”

Natasha went still and the blood ran cold in her veins.

“Alright,” Andrei said carefully. “We don’t need to shoot. Why don’t you put the guns away and we can talk?”

“No need to talk,” the wife said.

“Andrei,” Natasha whispered. Her hand drifted out towards him.

The gunman pulled her back sharply. “Not another word.”

Andrei’s hand drifted towards his holster. His face was impassive, but Natasha could see that his jaw was tightly clenched. “Let go of her.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so.”

“The building’s completely surrounded and there’s more on the way. You don’t have a way out.”

One of the officers took a step forwards, but the gunman leveled the pistol against Natasha’s temple. She and Andrei froze in horrified unison.

“Please, don’t,” she whimpered.

The gunman tilted his head coldly. “I’d say we have our way out. All of you, drop your guns and back against that wall.” Andrei hesitated for a second, and he pressed the gun harder against Natasha’s head. “Now!”

Slowly at first, the officers complied. Natasha’s legs almost went slack beneath her as Andrei stiffly put his gun down and retreated to the far wall.

He turned to his wife. “Are we good to go?”

She shot another glance out the window. “I don’t see any cars. Sorry, sheriff, looks like your friends got the wrong address.”

“Then we’ll be on our way.” He turned back to Andrei. “Don’t try to follow us. She’ll be watching my back.”

A hot rush of tears welled in Natasha’s eyes. She saw Andrei’s jaw working silently as he swallowed and nodded. “Don’t hurt her,” he said.

“Don’t give us a reason to.”

Natasha saw Andrei press his lips into a thin line, saw his hands tighten at his sides. He must have been aching to dive after his pistol. “Just let go of her,” he said calmly. “If you surrender right now, you won’t hang.”

The gunman snorted. He shot his wife a smirk, but she did not look nearly as amused. “Tempting. I think we’ll decline.”

Andrei flinched, but straightened resolutely. “It’s the best offer you’re going to receive.”

“Andrei, please,” Natasha pleaded.

He ignored her. “I’m trying to be cooperative here. But there are limits to what I can do for you.”

It didn’t escape her notice how Andrei’s hand had begun to drift to the pistol discreetly holstered at his hip. It didn’t escape the wife’s notice either, evidently, because she shouted, “Watch for his gun!” and the gunman pressed the barrel of his pistol back to Natasha’s temple.

“I told you, no funny business!”

Andrei didn’t drop his gun, but his face hardened and the tendons of his forearms visibly strained to stay put. “You’ve already got what you wanted,” he said. “You don’t need her anymore.”

The gunman sighed. “I’m a man of my word. It’s a shame you aren’t. How are we to trust you?” When Andrei could only stammer in response, he shook his head. “Well, in that case, we’ll be keeping her as collateral to make sure you and your boys stay in line.”

The woman’s head snapped towards him angrily.

“Andrei, _please_ ,” Natasha cried out. “ _Do_ something!”

“We’re leaving now,” the gunman said. He began to pull Natasha towards the door, and Andrei’s eyes went wide. “Come on, sweetheart.”

“Andrei!” she shrieked. “Sonya! _Someone_ , help!”

“Shut the hell up.”

Natasha tensed and closed her mouth.

“Better. Now, get moving.”

Jerkily, her feet began to move again. The gunman squeezed her bicep a little tighter as he shouldered his way through the front doors and turned to his wife.

“Where did he park?”

“Hell if I know. He was supposed to meet us out front.”

“Goddammit,” he swore. “We need to get another driver.”

“ _Fuck_.”

“It’s fine. Come on.”

“This is _not_ fine,” she hissed. “You should have left on my signal.”

A moment later, a black Ford came screeching around the bend of the road and pulled up in front of the bank. The gunman’s shoulders instantly sagged in relief.

“About time, you lazy son of a bitch!” he shouted, evidently at the driver. “Took your sweet time getting here, didn’t you?”

“Stop whinging,” said the wife.

“Shut up.”

“Get _in_ , you two,” the driver said hurriedly. “Before they start shooting at us.”

The gunman let out a caustic chuckle. His grip tightened around Natasha’s arm. “Oh, they won’t be shooting at us.”

They shoved her into the backseat without another word. The gunman clambered in behind her, seating himself to her left. Natasha flinched as his hip brushed against hers. To her right was a tall blonde boy, his skinny legs almost folded beneath him and onto the seat for lack of space.

“Who’s this?” he said.

The gunman scowled. “Our new friend.”

“You didn’t tell me you were _kidnapping_ anyone,” Natasha heard the driver hiss to the gunman’s wife.

“It doesn’t matter now. What would’ve you done about it, anyway?”

“I don’t want to be involved in this.”

“Too late.”

Natasha flinched. “Where are you taking me?’

“Doesn’t matter,” the gunman snapped.

The boy frowned. “Don’t be so rude, Fed.”

The gunman elbowed him in the ribs. “Shut up.”

The boy shrank back into his seat, rubbing his side and mouthing _‘ouch’_.

The driver still hadn’t turned around. He was hiding his face, Natasha realized. What must he have looked like? Was he disfigured? She pictured the grotesque deformity of a birth defect. Or perhaps the scarring of a childhood illness. Or maybe something grislier—an injury from the Great War. Something so vile and repulsive he could never reveal himself in public.

Natasha turned her head to the back window and watched as the road stretched out behind them like an endless spool of thread. The town had all but disappeared on the horizon, the buildings as small as needleheads and the telephone poles no larger than toothpicks. She realized with a slow, sinking sensation that she was gone for good. Andrei hadn’t fought for her, hadn’t followed them, and she was all on her own. The tears came back with renewed vigor, and she doubled over with a pathetic cry and wrapped her arms around her middle.

The gunman’s wife sighed and turned to the boy. “Deal with her,” she snapped.

The boy frowned and turned to Natasha. “Are you okay?”

Natasha shook her head, and gulped back another sob.

“Aw, it’s alright, love,” he said. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

He touched her shoulder, and Natasha violently cringed away, almost bumping into the gunman.

“Alright,” he murmured. “Sorry. I shouldn’t’a done that. I’ll give you your space. Do you need anything?”

She shook her head. “Nothing you can give me.”

“What if I could make you feel better?” The boy leaned in with a conspiratorial smirk, gestured to the gunman, and said, “You know, you really don’t need to be afraid of _him_. He only waves that thing around so no one will notice that the two of them are the same height.”

The gunman shot him a poisonous look. Natasha’s head shot up and she stared at the boy in shock. It seemed almost dangerous to laugh, but despite the situation, she found herself almost on the brink of giggling. Oblivious, he gestured to the woman and continued, “And this one? She’d show up later to her own funeral to finish her makeup. You know, she curled her hair specially for today. Probably spent hours getting dressed this morning too.”

Now the woman scowled, but she didn’t bother to turn around. Her eyes were too focused on the road ahead.

The boy winked, and Natasha was struck at once by how kind his eyes were. Was he a prisoner too? Well, he wasn’t restrained, but they hadn’t bothered to restrain her either, so it wasn’t all that much of a stretch.

A friend among strangers. She could trust him. That much she was sure of. Did he have a wife waiting for him at home? Natasha’s heart ached as she imagined the young woman that must have been longing for him, desperate for any news about her missing husband. How frightened she must have been.

But that particular train of thought only made Natasha panic again. She felt herself beginning to hyperventilate before she could stop herself.

“Shh,” the boy murmured, reaching for her hand. “What’s your name, darling?”

Natasha took in a deep, shuddering breath. His skin was cool to the touch. Without even realizing it, she found herself leaning into his shoulder. “Natasha Rostova-Bolkonskaya.”

At that, the driver slammed on the brakes so hard that the car jarred to a horrific, screeching halt and the four other passengers jolted forwards in their seats. He and the gunman’s wife begin to whisper back and forth angrily, and gradually, the car stuttered forward again.

The boy pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her. “Natasha? That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

“I’m Anatole,” he said. “And this is Hélène, that’s Fedya, and the guy driving is P—”

“Don’t,” the woman— _Hélène_ —cut in. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”

Anatole rolled his eyes at her before turning his attention back to Natasha. “Excuse her, she—”

“What did I _just_ say?” Hélène snapped, and Anatole shrank back into his seat without another word.

Fedya leaned up to squeeze Hélène’s shoulder. “We’re fine, Lena. Calm down.”

“ _Don’t_ tell me to calm down,” she said. “Nothing about this situation is fine. We didn’t plan for _her_.”

“We’ll adjust. We’ll figure something out.”

“And if we can’t?”

Fedya sank back into his seat and ran his fingers over his holster. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Natasha burst into panicked sobs again at that. Anatole looked horrified. His eyes flickered between Natasha and the front seat. “No tears,” he murmured. “You’re alright. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise.”

“For God’s sake,” said Hélène. “Anatole, shut her up. I can’t think straight with all this sniveling.”

“I’m s-sorry!” Natasha cried.

Anatole squeezed her hand. “Deep breaths, sweetheart. No one’s going to hurt you.”

“Please, just take me back,” Natasha gasped. “My husband is the sheriff”—Hélène and Fedya exchanged a surprised look—“and I’ll talk to him. I promise that nothing will happen to you, I won’t let him, if you just take me back now, _please_.”

“Enough,” Hélène snapped. She turned back to Anatole. “We don’t need any more liabilities. Especially mouthy ones.”

“Hélène’s right,” Fedya said, his voice cool and hard. “If she can’t control herself, maybe we’ll have to chloroform her.”

Anatole shot Natasha an apologetic look. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but now really isn’t the time.”

“I want to know where we are,” Natasha said, trying to hide the way her voice wavered. “And where we’re going. I think I have a right to know, seeing as you’ve kidnapped me.”

“We’re already here anyway,” Hélène said wryly.

Sure enough, a few seconds later, the driver slammed on the brakes again and they came to a halt in a patch of weeds and mud.

Natasha’s head snapped to the side. Ahead of them was a rickety little cottage, with yellow paint that was desperately clinging to the brick but faded through and chipped-off in some places. A beaten dirt trail meandered from the road midway up to the porch before it was devoured by the overgrowth of the lawn. The garden must have been well-cared for at one point, but most of the trellises lining the walls had been smashed, and the flower beds lay in a tangle of weeds and vines. She could see another two black cars parked by the shed. Other than that, there was no evidence that anyone had ever lived there at all.

It looked like a relic of the Dustbowl, an abandoned little doll’s house left to rot and crumble in the middle of nowhere. Most disconcertingly of all, she couldn’t see anything around it. There wasn’t another building in sight, even as she looked off into the distant horizon. No telephone wires, no silos, not even a distant road sign to keep them company. How had they traveled so far so quickly?

The driver was the first to disembark. He took off towards the house, passed the porch, went around the back to the garden path, and disappeared around the bend of the trellis, his head hanging low and his heels dragging in the mud, still hiding his face.

Fedya walked around to the side door with his arms folded across his chest and said, “Get out of the car.”

Natasha’s eyes flickered between him, the gun at his hip, and the road. “I’ll do no such thing.”

Hélène sighed. “And she chooses _now_ to grow a spine. I think you shoulda grabbed the other little girl, Fed.”

“Natasha, darling, would you please come out for me?” Anatole said, holding his hand out.

Natasha shook her head.

“I’m only trying to make things easier. For the both of us. This would be so much better if you could help me out here.”

She softened for a moment at the look of genuine concern on his face. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad. Anatole was nice and quiet and kind, not angry like the others. Surely he wouldn’t let her get hurt. Surely he would keep her safe, and after all, wouldn’t she be better off in the company of an ally?

Then Fedya muttered, “We could always drag her out,” and Natasha decided to scrap that last thought and stay the hell put.

The look on Anatole’s face was positively scandalized. “She’s a lady, Fedya, not a dog.”

“She’s an uncooperative lady.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break,” Hélène said. “This is a waste of our time.” She leaned against the car, peering into the backseat. “Listen, honey, you can come out now, nice and easy, or we can have Fedya haul you out and make a scene. Your choice, but you can’t stay there.”

Anatole turned back to Natasha. He held out his hand again. “Please. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. Scout’s honor.”

Natasha’s eyes darted to the road again and she slowly stepped out of the car. Her heart thundered in her ears. Anatole let his hand drop when she refused to take it.

“Okay, that’s good,” he said. “Now—”

Before he could say anything else, Natasha took off down the road as fast as her legs could carry her.

She didn’t get very far. Fedya sighed and caught her around the waist with as little effort as picking up a child. Natasha screamed and flailed about, tossing her arms and legs everywhere, until her elbow collided with something fleshy and bony and then there was a great _crack_ , and Anatole gasped and Hélène took a step backwards. Fedya dropped her almost immediately, one hand flying to his face, although he managed to keep one hand shackled around her wrist.

“She broke my nose,” he said incredulously. Already, his fingertips were bloodied. “She actually broke my goddamn nose.”

Natasha blanched as the grip on her wrist tightened. “Oh my God,” she blubbered. “I didn’t mean to, I—”

“God, does she _ever_ stop jabbering, this one?” said Hélène. She turned to Fedya, crossing her arms. “It’s not _broken_ , you big baby. Quit whining.”

“Come with me,” Anatole said softly, imploringly, and offered Natasha his arm. Her eyes darted between Anatole and Fedya before her face collapsed and she tucked her hand into the crook of Anatole’s elbow. “There we go,” Anatole murmured.

“I know a fucking broken nose when I feel one,” said Fedya.

Hélène scoffed. “Serves you goddamn right for being so slow.”

It didn’t escape Natasha’s notice how she and Fedya flanked Anatole, or the way that Fedya’s hand hovered by his holster, but she was too frightened and overwhelmed to protest. Instead, she leaned into Anatole for comfort. It was silly. Pathetic, even. But he was just about Andrei’s size, if a little too slim for Andrei’s build, close enough that it didn’t matter if she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Jesus,” Fedya muttered. “Our little Romeo.”

“I think it’s cute,” said Hélène. “And I think he thinks it’s cute, too. Look at how red his face is.”

It looked more like he was sunburnt rather than blushing, but there was no point in mentioning that. The poor boy, Natasha thought, having to play along with this farce. Having to tolerate the jibes of his captors and put on a brave face. Had they threatened him too, before? Had he once resisted and fought back? Or had he been compliant from the beginning?

He was far more patient than she was, at any rate. Natasha silently resolved that if the ribbing turned on her next, she wouldn’t respond with nearly as much grace as he did. And she would break Fedya’s nose for real too, and she wouldn’t regret it for a second.

“Can’t you see you’re making her uncomfortable?” Anatole said.

“What a gentleman,” Hélène crooned, pinching his cheek.

Anatole gave her a charming, crooked smile. “I learned from the best.”

This, understandably, threw something of a wrench into the little backstory Natasha had constructed for him. ‘Learned from the best,’ denoted a sort of familiarity, a history that extended beyond being just a hostage. Quickly and with fierce determination, she began to rewrite.

So he had been with them for a while. That didn’t mean anything. It didn’t _have_ to mean anything. Was he in debt to them, then? The victim of organized crime, forced to join in to repay his dues? It wasn’t an unfathomable stretch—she remembered what had happened to her brother Nikolai and his gambling ring. Yes, that must have been it. So he must have known how terrible and alone she felt. He was trying to make her feel comfortable and safe, maybe signal that he was on her side.

 _What a gentleman indeed,_ she thought, and began to relax a little.

The relaxing didn’t last for long. Natasha swallowed heavily as she was led up the porch and into what she presumed was meant to be the living room and the door slammed shut behind them.

“We’re home,” Hélène announced to the empty hall.

If there had been proper, inhabitable furniture here at one point, that time was long gone. The windows were blacked-out and the wallpaper was peeling, and as they stepped across the threshold, their feet left thick prints in the dust. When nobody responded, they rounded the corner into the kitchen. One of the wall cabinets had been ripped out, as had the light fixture, but everything else appeared relatively intact, and somebody had cleaned the stove recently, if the notable absence of grime was anything to go by.

In one corner, underneath another blacked-out window, several wooden chairs had been haphazardly arranged around a low, round table. The hutch in the corner of the room had had its glass smashed in, and its paneling was riddled with what looked suspiciously like bullet holes. Natasha turned away before her imagination could get the better of her.

Then, from up ahead, there came the sound of floorboards creaking and muffled chatter. So, they weren’t the only ones here. Judging by Hélène and Fedya and Anatole’s taciturn reactions, this wasn’t unexpected.

Fedya turned to Hélène. “What are you thinking?”

She paused for a second. “There’s a spare room upstairs we could use.”

“They’ll pester us upstairs.”

“Use the downstairs one, then.”

“Which one?” said Anatole.

“Guest bedroom.”

“I didn’t know we had a guest bedroom,” he said. He turned to Natasha. “You learn new things every day with these nutjobs.”

Fedya rolled his eyes and grabbed Natasha’s wrist, before pulling her into a side room impatiently. She was about to protest, but Anatole quickly came to her aid.

“Don’t. I’ve got it.”

Hélène crossed her arms and fixed him with a critical look. “Are you _sure_ you can handle this? We can find someone else. I’m sure Boris or Denisov would be more than happy to babysit instead.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Don’t you trust me, Lenochka?”

Lenochka? They were close enough for pet names now?

 _Well,_ Natasha thought, _we all play the cards we’re dealt. Clever boy._

Hélène snorted. “No.”

Anatole laughed and held a hand over his heart in mock-offense. “You wound me.”

“All too easy, you big baby.”

Anatole turned to Natasha with a sardonic grin. “You hear this one? The way she talks to me?”

Hélène ruffled his hair again and gave him a light slap on the shoulder. Her smile was friendly, genuine. Too genuine.

Natasha’s stomach sank as her eyes darted back and forth between the two of them and she realized how blind she had been.

“But…you’re _with_ them?” she spluttered.

Anatole raised his eyebrows bemusedly. “Well, how did you think this arrangement worked?”

Natasha flushed a dark red and her eyes went wide.

“Oh, boy,” he said. “Did you think I was a hostage too or something?” He turned back to Fedya. “They always think that for some reason.”

“Wonder why,” said Hélène.

Fedya placed a hand on Natasha’s shoulder. “Trust me, doll,” he chuckled, “if this one was a prisoner”—he nodded in Anatole’s direction—“we’d’ve long since shot him.”

Anatole looked mildly offended by that. “Hey!”

Natasha’s blood ran cold. Shot him. _Shot_ him. Oh, dear God, these people were actually willing to fire at flesh and blood, not just drywall. Fedya’s nonchalant statement was oddly more terrifying than any of the guns that had been waved in her face over the course of the past hour, and before she could even register what was happening, she ducked down, low, and squirmed out of Fedya’s grasp, but Anatole caught her by the arm before she could even make it to the door.

“Sorry, darling. You aren’t going anywhere.”

She began to flail again, but he only drew her in closer until she was pressed against his chest with his grip tight on her forearms.

“Perhaps we ought to tie her up,” Hélène said. “If she’s going to keep trying to run.”

Natasha let out a horrified gasp, and Anatole frowned. “Aw, Lena, don’t be mean.”

“It’s not mean, it’s _practical_.”

“It’s both,” he said, and looked back at Natasha, who stood very, very still. “Look, you’ve gone and frightened the poor thing now.”

Fedya snorted. “If she wasn’t frightened already, she doesn’t have a lick of common sense.”

“Don’t think she had one to begin with, either way,” said Hélène.

“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Anatole said cajolingly. “It won’t be necessary.”

Natasha blinked, bewildered. “What are you—?”

Hélène narrowed her eyes. “She’s your responsibility.”

“I _beg_ your pardon.”

“She won’t be trouble,” said Anatole. He tilted his head. “Ain’t that right, Tasha?”

Natasha pressed her lips in a thin line and tried, in vain, to shake Anatole off. She managed to sway his balance, but he quickly righted his footing again. Fedya chuckled, ignoring the poisonous glare that Anatole directed at him.

Hélène stepped forwards and ruffled Anatole’s hair. There was something fond in her gesture, something almost familial. “Oh, Tolya,” she sighed.

Anatole swatted her hand away, and with that, the last puzzle piece fell into place. Natasha’s face burned even hotter.

Family. Of course, they had to be family. What were they to each other—cousins? Siblings? Now as she looked again, she could see the likeness of their features. Hélène’s coloring may have been darker and Anatole’s build may have been lankier, but the resemblance was unmistakable. How had she not noticed it sooner? This was worse, somehow, than him just being an accomplice.

 _No,_ she realized with a sudden burst of confidence. This was better. Familiarity meant value, and value meant sway, and sway meant he was an easy target, and a soft one at that. Someone she could leverage against the others, or at least Hélène, which might in turn be leverage against Fedya. God only knew how she would go about doing this, but it was a good thought to keep in her back pocket.

“We have some important business to discuss,” Hélène said, shooting Fedya a meaningful glance. “Alone.”

“Alright, Romeo,” Fedya said, and turned to Anatole. “We’ll leave you two lovebirds in peace. If she starts acting up, just give us a shout.”

Anatole nodded. “Gotcha.”

The door closed behind them with a final, dull _click_.


	2. The Syndication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nat and Hélène both try to take charge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for everyone who's read this so far! We're SUPER excited about this fic!
> 
> ~ warning that a minor character does get shot in this chapter, but nothing graphic happens

Natasha pulled her knees to her chest as she sat down on the bed, positioning herself in the far corner of the room and as far away from Anatole as possible. It was dimly-lit here, the only furniture being the bed she was sitting on and a small dresser next to it. The wallpaper was a faded yellow, peeling in some places, and the air stank of antiseptic and sulphur.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” Anatole said. To his credit, he did sound very apologetic. That wasn’t going to make up for what he had done, of course. “It must be overwhelming for you.”

She remained silent.

“I know it doesn’t look it, but this is one of the nicer rooms in the house. You’ll be comfortable here.”

He was alone now, and didn’t have Fedya and Hélène to back him up or tell her off. Consequently, she allowed herself to be a little more brusque in her response:

“I don’t know how comfortable I can be. Seeing as how I’m a prisoner and all.”

Anatole sat down on the bed next to her, leaning back until he was nearly lying down. She scooted closer to the wall. “Could be worse.” He shuffled around a little, and then smiled. “The mattress isn’t lumpy, at least. You should see the room they usually stick the other hostages. This…jeez, this is like the Ritz.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “The other hostages?”

He seemed to realize that he had erred, because he quickly backpedalled. “I mean, there aren’t any others right now. Just you.”

Natasha swallowed. Just her. Only her. There was no one else here with her, nobody on her side.

For the first time in her life, she was truly alone.

* * *

 

There wasn’t enough space in the house to have a proper conference room, and the boys had taken their rifles to the nice office furniture long before Hélène had been aware that there even _was_ an office, so they had had to improvise with the dining room and the dinner table. It didn’t exactly make for the comfiest or most elegant meeting space, but it was better than nothing, and as Vasily had always told her, vanity was your downfall waiting to happen.

Pierre was already sitting at the table with a face like thunder and a deck of cards laid out for a game of solitaire. Once he saw them come in, he quickly reshuffled the deck and stuffed it back into his coat pocket, and his glower became something more bashful and nervous.

“You coulda kept playing, you know,” Fedya said nonchalantly. “Looked like you were doing pretty good there.”

Pierre ignored him and turned to Hélène. “You never said anything about taking hostages.”

He sounded accusatory. Angry, even. He hardly had a right to be, not when he couldn’t even show up on time at a designated spot. Some getaway driver he was.

“Because it wasn’t in the plan,” said Fedya, as he pulled up a chair.

Hélène propped her feet up on the table, just as she used to do in her old office. She dug around in her purse for her packet of cigarettes and lit one, leaning back in her seat. “Well, it is now.” She exhaled slowly, and smoke spiraled out of her mouth. “Thanks to you.”

Fedya crossed his arms and slumped down in his chair with an angry huff.

“Get the others, Petrushka, would you?” she said sweetly, though there was no need to take such a polite tone with him. She could have cursed his name and screamed insults at him and he would have obeyed her all the same, the dopey old cow that he was. “We need to talk.”

A few minutes later, Boris and Denisov slid into the chairs opposite hers. Hélène resisted the urge to sigh. When Vasily had been in charge, his core operation had had over twenty men. Now she had eight.

Loyalty these days, it seemed, had gone to the dogs.

“Where is everyone else?” she said, understandably irritated.

“Supply run,” said Denisov. “They’ll be back soon.”

“They’d better be,” Fedya snapped. He, unlike Hélène, had no issue behaving like an ass so long as he could get away with it. It was a trait that had made him quite feared among their current social circle.

Respected, however. That was another matter entirely.

“How’d it go?” said Boris.

“Fedya’s a fucking idiot,” Hélène said. “It was a disaster.”

“Oh boy,” said Denisov.

Boris grinned, snakelike and cold, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. He always enjoyed hearing about when others botched their jobs, which was hardly the most irritating thing about him. Whether it was in compensation for low self-esteem or more of an ego thing was up for debate. “Do tell, Lenochka.”

Hélène shot him a glare at the nickname, but didn’t respond, turning instead to Fedya. “Why don’t you tell them?”

“We have an unexpected guest,” he muttered.

“Ah,” said Boris. “So, was it this unexpected guest who gave you your unexpected nosebleed?”

“Do us all a favor and shut your goddamn trap, Drubetskoy.”

“She’s a wild little thing,” said Hélène.

Denisov furrowed his brow. “So you left her with Anatole.” He shook his head. “Not the best call, Lena.”

“Well, it was my call to make, not yours. And ‘Hélène’ is fine, thank you.”

Boris did not look impressed at all. “We’re running low on supplies as is. We can’t afford to feed another person.”

“I _know_ that,” Hélène snapped. “We didn’t plan for this, but we’ll just have to adjust. This isn’t anything we haven’t done before.”

“Do you even know what you’re gonna do with her?” said Boris.

Hélène shook her head. “We’re going to have to get rid of her. Sooner rather than later.”

“Oh, dear God,” Pierre murmured, and put his head in his hands.

Fedya sighed and clapped Pierre soundly on the back. “Best not to think of it, old man.”

“Taking her was short-sighted,” Hélène said, shooting Fedya a poisonous glare. “It was a mistake, and now we have to deal with the consequences. Simple as that.”

“No kidding,” said Denisov.

Fedya bristled defensively. “It’s not as if we had any other options. Unless you wanted the sheriff to put a bullet between my ears.”

“Of course we did,” said Hélène. “But you were too hot-headed to see them.”

“Dolokhov, hot-headed? Now, there’s a surprise,” said Boris, in a quiet voice.

“Well, that doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“I say we shoot her,” Hélène said. “Leave the body by the side of the road. No witnesses, no loose ends, no nothing.”

Boris nodded. “Seconded.”

“It’s a viable option,” Denisov murmured.

“No, no, no,” said Pierre, slamming his palm onto the table. “Jesus Christ. Have a heart, woman.”

“We could always leave her somewhere,” Fedya offered. “Find some dinky little town in the Dustbowl, drop her off at the post office and be off on our way. We’ll be gone before she can even reach the police station.”

Pierre began, “Surely you can show a little compassion. Listen—”

“That’s riskier. And it’ll take too much time. Time that we don’t have.”

“—she’s only a young girl and she had nothing to—”

“Won’t take long at all. And if we kill her, we’ve got a body to take care of as well.”

“—do with—”

“We’ll just leave it on the roadside.”

“—this and—”

“If we’re gonna off prisoners, we’re gonna do it the right way and bury the damn body.”

“Once again,” she said testily, “we do not have time for that.”

“Please, just listen to me,” Pierre murmured.

“Do you have time to fend off the sheriff and his crew once they find his wife’s corpse?” Fedya snapped.

“We’ll be gone and onto the next job by then,” Hélène said. “We’re going to run out of funds if we have to stop and deal with this.”

“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d’ve brought me along instead,” Boris said.

Hélène’s eyes flashed dangerously and she fixed him with a stern look. “I didn’t ask you for your opinion, Drubetskoy. Feyda’s a moron, but he’s worth more than ten of you put together.”

“He’s worth a sheriff on our tail and a hostage we didn’t think to account for, evidently.”

She exhaled sharply, blowing smoke in his face.

Denisov, ever the peacemaker, put his hands out and said, “Perhaps we should reconsider our strategy next time. It might be better if you let me and Boris handle some of the heavy lifting. And I don’t think your brother’s the best man for the job either, for that matter.”

“Speak for yourself, Vaska,” said Fedya.

“ _We_ don’t make these decisions,” Hélène said coldly. “ _I_ do. You both could stand to remember that.”

“We could decide to spare her,” Pierre said, but nobody paid him any attention.

Boris tipped his head to the side. “I think you could stand to remember what happened the last time you ignored my suggestions.”

Hélène’s head snapped back in his direction, but before she could say or do anything, Pierre quickly said, “Why don’t we ransom her?”

The room fell silent.

Denisov frowned. “You think?”

“S’not worth it,” said Boris.

“Shut up,” Fedya snapped.

“Let him speak,” said Denisov. “Go on, Bezukhov.”

Pierre swallowed, as if readying himself for their collective judgement. “Her husband’s the sheriff. The family can afford it. He’ll pay up, and everyone lives.” Hélène hesitated, and he pressed on. “We’ve wasted enough time over this. Wouldn’t you like to get something out of it?”

Fedya frowned. “Not without its risks either.”

“We’ll run ourselves into the ground if we keep going like this.”

“Perhaps Pierre’s got a point,” Hélène said. Fedya whipped around to glare at her and she raised a hand to quiet him. “There’s no beating around the bush. We need the money.”

Pierre exhaled sharply.

“May as well take what we can,” she continued. “We can’t take her with us on the next job either way.”

The room had begun to smell of smoke. Hélène ground the end of her cigarette into the table and promptly reached for another.

“I dunno about that,” Fedya said wryly. He tenderly rubbed at his still-bleeding nose. “That one’s got a bit of fire in her.”

“Maybe she’s a little more trouble than she’s worth,” said Hélène, and Pierre blanched, his hand over his heart. “Might have to shoot her after all.”

Fedya shrugged. “She’s only a little thing. Nothing Tolya can’t handle.”

Boris folded his arms across his chest. “Anatole?” he scoffed. “That boy couldn’t handle—”

“I’d think twice about finishing that sentence if I were you,” Hélène said sweetly, her hand tracing patterns along the barrel of her pistol.

Boris glared at her and shoved his chair back. “This discussion is useless. You’re in over your head, and you won’t listen to anyone who might know more than you.”

“Now, now,” said Denisov, “let’s not argue.”

Fedya could see the way Hélène’s eyes narrowed, and interjected before she could say anything else. “Walk it off, Drubetskoy,” he snapped. “And try to remember your place here.”

“Watch your tone, Dolokhov,” Boris said. “You’re nothing but a chauffeur who got promoted by screwing the boss’s daughter.”

Hélène bolted to her feet at that, her eyes burning. “ _I’m_ the boss now,” she snarled. “And you’ll give me the respect I expect from you.”

Boris barked out a harsh-sounding laugh. “I don’t owe you anything. Your old man may’ve drilled that shit into your head, but it doesn’t hold up anymore. This is the real world, sweetheart. Your authority begins and ends with his grave.”

“I think you’re a smart and capable boy, which is why I’m giving you a chance to take back what you just said and apologize.”

“And _that’s_ why no one will ever take you seriously. You’re just a soft, spoiled little girl who doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

“I think I’m being more than generous here.”

“Things are gonna change around here once I’m in charge,” he said, and now his voice took on a distinctly arrogant quality that made her arch an eyebrow and made Pierre shift uncomfortably in his seat.

Hélène snorted. “Is that so?”

“I won’t decide promotions the way you do. Of course,” he said, raking his eyes down Hélène’s legs, “I might make an exception for you, honey.”

“Watch it, Boris,” Fedya snapped. “You’re out of line.”

“Out of line?” Boris scoffed derisively. Almost a laugh. “Rich, coming from you.” He turned on Hélène with a cold look. “How would your father feel about the way you conduct yourself? About the way you prioritize? If there’s anyone out of line here, it’s you and your gigolo of a gunman.”

“Apologize,” she said coldly. “I’m not going to give you another opportunity to.”

Boris didn’t say anything to her as he reached into his suit pocket and lit a cigarette, bringing it to his lips. Instead, he turned to Fedya. “Honestly, Dolokhov, I pegged you as having a backbone. I don’t know why you put up with this.”

“With what?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“With _her_.” He shook his head an exhaled a stream of smoke. “She may be dynamite in the sack, but is it gonna be worth it once she tosses you to the side for the next man that comes her way?”

Fedya raised his eyebrows. “And I suppose that would be you?”

“That train’s left the station,” he said drily. “I don’t want a woman who doesn’t know her place.”

“You’re an idiot,” Fedya said coolly.

Boris tipped his head back and laughed. “I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s neutered you. You used to have a spine, you know.”

“Difference between not having a spine and knowing when to shut my trap.”

“Course you say that,” he grumbled. “This place hasn’t been the same since Kuragin kicked the bucket. We had dignity then. We had a proper leader then. We didn’t have this little _bitch_ —”

_BANG._

Fedya flinched at the gunshot and instinctively shoved his chair back. Boris’s face went very pale, and he touched his stomach in disbelief.

Hélène placed her pistol, still smoking at the barrel, on the table. Her face was already schooled into blankness, but Fedya could see her still trembling with fury. “Denisov,” she said, with great restraint.

Denisov was still staring at Boris, who had crumpled to the floor, gasping. “Yes ma’am?”

She gestured towards Boris. “Be a dear and clean this up, would you?”

Denisov swallowed nervously. He hardly had the right to be nervous, she thought stiffly. God knew he was familiar enough with this routine. “Of course.”

“Good man. Fedya, come with me.”

Fedya stood, slowly and with still-wide eyes, and followed her out of the dining room and down the hall, leaving the others behind to deal with Boris and the splatter of blood that had spilled across the countertops and the walls.

* * *

 

Natasha discreetly ran her hand over her pocket and was overcome with relief when she felt the tiny bulge in her pocket.

The hatpin. Of course, they hadn’t thought to take her hatpin. All was not lost.

“Tell me about yourself,” Anatole said. “Where are you from?”

This was probably his tenth attempt in as many minutes to initiate small talk with her. She had valiantly fended him off with sullen glares and abject silence until now, but it was clear that he was about to lose his mind of boredom. Not even an hour had she known him, and she could already tell that he was the sort to talk your ear off given the slightest chance.

“If you’re going to shoot me,” she said, in the most confident tone she could muster. “I’d rather you just get it over with.”

Anatole was evidently thrown by this. He shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the bed frame. “No guns. See?” He gestured up and down his torso. “I’ve got nothing. You can pat me down, if you want.”

Unarmed. He was completely unarmed, the absolute idiot. Oh, this was too good to be true. Was her luck finally starting to turn up?

“No, thank you,” she said.

“Suit yourself.”

Natasha scoffed. “Are you this friendly with all your prisoners? Or am I just lucky?”

His grin was infuriatingly pleasant. What sort of a man smiled in a hostage crisis? “I try to be friendly with everyone I meet.”

“What a gentleman,” she spat.

“Manners are important. Especially in this line of work, if you’d believe it.”

“You should try telling your friends that.”

“That’s why they keep me around. I _am_ the manners.”

Natasha scoffed.

“Aw, c’mon. Really, they’re not all that bad. Lena—Hélène, I mean—she’s got a good heart. She isn’t going to let anything happen to you. Promise.”

“I don’t have any reason to believe you,” she said.

Anatole shrugged again. “You don’t have to believe me. But I’m sure it would make you feel better. And it’s true, for what it’s worth.”

 _BANG_.

They both jumped in their seats.

“What was that?” she whispered. Her hands clenched into fists, so tight that her knuckles went white.

“It was probably nothing,” he said quickly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“That sounded like a _gunshot_ ,” she snapped. “Don’t you tell me not to worry.”

“It wasn’t a gunshot. Just something falling. Or floorboards creaking. It’s an old house, you know.”

“Oh, God, they’re going to shoot me next, aren’t they?”

Anatole’s eyes widened in obvious panic. “No, no,” he said quickly, but it was too late.

Natasha buried her face in her hands. “My husband must be so _worried_ ,” she gasped, unsure of how much of it was in genuine panic. “He must be out of his mind by now. My cousin and my godmother too. What are they going to do without me?”

“Aw, Tasha, I’m sorry,” he murmured, and looped an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t cry. Everything’s gonna be alright, I promise.”

Natasha leaned into him as he ran his hand up and down her arm, still sniffling. His guard was clearly down—that, or he was a much better actor than she had thought. Come to think of it, this must have meant that _she_ was a better actress than she had thought, too.

She made a fist with one hand and held the pin between her pointer and middle fingers, making sure to keep it hidden beneath the fold of her skirt. Her heart thundered in her ears. Her palms went slick with sweat. This was a dangerous plan. Genius if she got away with it, outright idiotic if it failed.

Well, she didn’t have much to lose either way. And Anatole made for an easy target: soft and affable, clever enough to be a threat to her but clueless enough to be a threat to himself.

Before he could even blink, she slammed her palm into his chest with all her weight and strength, shoving him down onto his back with the pointed end of the pin jammed against the underside of his jaw, and kneeled over him. His hand fumbled to the headboard for support, and he tipped his head back when she threatened to drive the pin upwards.

“Whoa, easy there!” he gasped.

“Don’t talk.”

He closed his mouth. Natasha straightened her back, sitting upright, and pinned his other hand beneath her knee.

“I’m taking you hostage,” she said, almost wincing at the way her voice shook.

Anatole only raised an eyebrow. “Tasha, darling—”

“Quiet!” she snapped. She didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t want to kill _anyone_ , not even Hélène or Fedya. She probably couldn’t have, even if she did want to.

But he didn’t have to know that.

“What are you going to do?” he said. He sounded calm. Bored, even. Awfully confident for a man whose throat she could have slit with a slip of the hand—that is, if her hand would only stop trembling. “The others are in the next room. You aren’t going to be able to fend them off with a hatpin.”

“No,” she admitted, pressing the pin a little further. “I won’t be able to fend them off. But I could always hurt you instead.”

“Tasha—”

“Don’t call me that.”

“My apologies.”

“And don’t talk, either.” She grabbed his other wrist, held it as tight as she could, and dug her nails in for good measure. “You’re going to come with me, and we’re going to speak to your friends.”

Anatole sighed and let his back slump against the mattress. “Alright, then. As you wish.”

Her pulse began to slow. So far, this was working far better than she had expected. It wasn’t enough that she felt confident, but the tremor in her hands had lessened. With her hand still around his wrist, she stood up and off the bed and yanked him along with her. There was no need to be forceful. Anatole obediently followed without a word of protest.

Natasha broke eye contact with him for less than a second as she turned to the door, but it was enough. Anatole dropped onto one knee, twisted the arm she was holding, and with a great pull, tugged himself loose, grabbing her wrist with his free hand.

Natasha flinched and tried to yank her wrist out of his grip, but he held fast. “I’m sorry,” she stammered out.

It was a small mercy that he looked more confused than angry. “That stings,” he murmured, pensively rubbing at his throat. Now she could see that the pin had left red scratch marks against his skin.

“I didn’t mean…” she began.

Suddenly, the door flew open with a bang. Natasha and Anatole both froze in their spots and turned to stare at the doorway, where Hélène and Fedya had walked into the room.

Fedya raised an eyebrow as he took in the sight of the two of them, clearly roughed-up, Anatole’s hand tight around Natasha’s wrist. “Is everything alright in here?”

Her heart began to thunder again. Surely Anatole would tell them what she had done, what she had _tried_ to do, and then they would be furious and it would all be over for her, and dear God, why did she have to make things worse when they were already going so badly?

“Of course,” Anatole said smoothly. Her head shot up, and she stared at him in confusion and disbelief.

Hélène frowned. “We heard a commotion.”

“Oh, it was nothing. You’re probably just hearing things. It’s an old house.”

A wave of relief washed over her, but it quickly gave way to suspicion.

Hélène looked unconvinced, but she didn’t seem to want to argue with him. “If you say so.”

“Anything you need?”

Hélène gestured for him to follow her. She was smiling, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, and her voice was businesslike and brusque. “I’d like to have a chat,” she said, in a tone that indicated this was more of an order than a suggestion.

Anatole turned his charming smile on Natasha. “Duty calls,” he said. “Lovely conversation, Tasha.”

 _Speak for yourself,_ she thought, and was about to say it out loud when Hélène folded her arms and said, “Fedya, would you mind keeping her company while Tolya and I talk?”

Fedya gave her a look as if to say, _Do I really have a choice?_

Hélène ruffled his hair affectionately before he could even respond and left with Anatole in tow, and Anatole all but kicked the door shut behind him.

Natasha turned to Fedya with a gulp, suddenly wishing for Anatole to come back. Short or not, Fedya was a lot more frightening up close. He leaned against the doorframe, pulled out a lighter, and began to fiddle with it.

“My nose is feeling _much_ better, thank you for asking,” he said gruffly. Every time he flicked the lighter on, it made a quiet _click_.

She resisted the urge to smile at that. His nose didn’t, as a matter of fact, look any better—the bridge had already darkened to a garish purple, and the front of his shirt was still stained with blood. It filled her with more than a little pride to know that it was her handiwork she was looking at.

“There’s no point trying anything like that again,” he said, evidently having noticed her fascination with his injury. _Click, click_.

Natasha straightened her back. “It almost worked before.”

“Because Anatole is a moron.” _Click, click. Click, click_. “But the rest of us aren’t.”

“Right,” Natasha said, pointedly staring at the bruise on his nose. _Click, click_. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

Fedya scowled at her. _Click, click_ , went the lighter, and he slipped it back in his pocket. “We’re gonna ransom you. Unless you keep being a pain.”

Natasha felt a fraction of the tension she had been holding all day fade. A ransom. They wanted her alive.

Perhaps things weren’t going to turn out so badly, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We <3 feedback! Kudos/ comments make our days!


	3. The Delegation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anatole just wants some damn peace and quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you like our writing, check out our other fics 'Either Very Clever or Very Stupid' and 'Of Dust and Dæmons'!

Hélène brought him to one of the side rooms leading off from the kitchen. It had once been a pantry, until the former owners had snatched away every crumb they could find, and someone that had come in between then and now had ripped the shelving away from the walls. But it wasn’t terribly dusty, and more importantly, the drywall and insulation muffled a good deal of noise, which must have meant that she had something important to tell him that she didn’t want the others to overhear.

Never a good sign.

“What is it?” Anatole said, frowning as she closed the door behind them. It rattled in its frame and kicked up a cloud of dust that made the both of them sneeze. “Did I do something wrong?”

Hélène had a stern look on her face. In the dim, flickering light, he swore she could’ve been their father’s double. Add some grey hairs and stubble, square the chin, narrow the forehead, and it would be a perfect match. “Not what you did.” She gestured back to the door. “What _she_ did.”

“The girl? She’s been fine,” Anatole said. “Nothing happened.”

She tipped her head back. The cigarette in her hands was still smoking. He could smell it. He was tempted to ask her to take their conversation out into the hallway, where they could crack a window. “You’re a terrible liar, Tolya,” she said, and he immediately decided against it.

He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Hélène gestured forwards with her cigarette. The smell grew stronger and he had to stop himself from wrinkling his nose. “Why don’t you take a look in the mirror?”

Anatole’s hand flew to his throat on reflex. Nevermind the fact that the only mirror in the house was in the upstairs bathroom, he didn’t need to look to see what she was referring to. Natasha’s pin had probably left more than a few scratch marks. They still stung, though he had hoped turning his collar up would have been enough to hide them. Fuck. That was careless of him. That was downright sloppy.

“I’ll ask you again. What happened?”

He couldn’t outright lie to her. She’d see through him like wet tissue paper. Better to try beat around the bush, wait till she drew a more preferable conclusion herself, and then jump on that.

“The Papa imitation is getting really old, Lena,” he said.

“So is the whole fake-innocent schtick. Now,” she said as she took another drag of her cigarette, “did those marks come from teeth or nails?”

Anatole blushed and averted his eyes. The room was too hot. He could almost feel the smoke creeping down his back.

Hélène stared into his face intently. “Was she being difficult?”

“Not at all.”

“She’s already tried to hurt Fedya and we don’t need liabilities.”

“I know that. She’s not going to be a liability.”

“If she’s attacking people, she’s a liability.”

“Jeez, Lena, lighten up, would you?”

“Anatole,” she snapped.

He raised his hands in mock-defense. “She’s not. She’s not attacking anyone. I’m flattered, really, that you think that highly of me. That I’d let a hostage attack me.”

“I think you might. If she was young and pretty and batted her eyes at you.”

Anatole frowned, lowering his hands. “Hey.”

“I’m only being honest. Common sense has never been your strong suit.”

“That’s mean.”

“It’s true. I love you, Tolya, but you walk around with your head in the clouds most of the day, and when it’s not up there it’s buried in the sand.”

“You’re sounding like Mama now.”

“I’m _concerned_ for you,” she said sternly. “And I am concerned that this girl—”

“For Christ’s sake, she didn’t jump me.”

“Then tell me what happened.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, nothing happened, Lena.”

Hélène narrowed her eyes and leaned forwards. “Did she _come-on_ to you?”

Anatole considered that for a moment. It was a little overboard, a little vulgar, even, but it was better than the alternative. Most importantly, it would satisfy Hélène, and it would make Natasha seem like less of a threat. He kept his eyes downcast and nodded.

Hélène tutted and rolled her eyes fondly. “You do know she’s _married_ , Tolya. You can’t let your guard down because a pretty girl smiled at you.”

“I didn’t,” he said smoothly. “I shut her down before she got anywhere.”

She narrowed her eyes. It was patronizing, and it made him bristle inwardly, despite his satisfaction at the lie. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“You can trust me more than you think you can, you know.”

“It isn’t that I don’t trust you,” she said. “But we don’t have time for complications or screw-ups. Which is why you aren’t going to be watching her anymore.”

Anatole frowned. “Why not?”

“Too risky. You’re unfocused. And I trust Fedya not to let himself get jumped by the first thing that smiles in his direction.”

“I have a rapport with her, and I know how to talk to her.”

Hélène raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure your rapport is what we need.”

“She’ll listen to me.”

“We need someone to check on her and keep her from leaving. I couldn’t care less if she finds her guards agreeable or not.”

“Her finding me agreeable lends itself to her being more agreeable. I rest my case.”

Hélène shook her head. “You’re acting as if this is a debate.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t. You can trade shifts with Fedya tomorrow morning.”

“ _Lena_.”

She had already started back down the hallway to the door. “No arguments, Toto. My mind is made up.”

Anatole scowled and aimlessly kicked at the wall. He regretted it instantly. The drywall crumbled with a noxious cloud of dust and what was probably asbestos, and he doubled over coughing.

“A temper tantrum isn’t going to change things,” she said coolly, from the corridor. “Don’t make me send you to your room.”

“Oh, fuck off. I’m not seven.”

“You’re acting like it. Now, are you going to come out, or should we move your sleeping bag here for the night.”

“You’re awful.”

He followed her out into the hallway anyway.

Hélène smiled and ruffled his hair. “Fedya’s got it. Just relax and get some sleep.”

* * *

 

He wasn’t going to listen to her, of course.

Anatole waited until Hélène had stalked back to the office before making his way to Natasha’s room. In his socks, shoes in hand. The floorboards would have creaked to hell and back otherwise.You didn’t need a security system in this house—all you needed was a functional pair of ears and you’d know every single movement from basement to ceiling.

Natasha was still sitting on the bed when he returned, her arms crossed rebelliously as Fedya leaned against the wall and smoked. Every time he exhaled, she wrinkled her nose and made a big show of coughing. If it was a ploy to get Fedya’s attention, it clearly wasn’t working. He was looking at the wallpaper, but his eyes were unfocused and distant. Half asleep, probably.

“Hey,” Anatole said, and the two of them jumped in their seats. The socks had worked. They hadn’t heard him coming.

Fedya raised his eyebrows. “What did Lena wanna talk about?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll look after the girl tonight.”

His eyebrows creeped a little further up his forehead. “Lena told me to.”

“Yeah, well, there’s been an update. She told me you’re offa guard duty now.”

“Why would she change her mind?”

Anatole shrugged. “Dunno. But she sounded pretty insistent. And a little flustered. I’m sure she’d be awful keen to see you.”

Fedya perked up immediately at that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Anatole nodded. “You can leave. I’ve got it all under control. Ain’t that right, Tasha?”

Natasha rolled her eyes and turned away.

Fedya frowned. “Are you sure you can handle this?”

“Of course,” he said cheerfully. “When have I not been able to handle this sort of stuff?”

Natasha let out a bitter chuckle. Anatole would’ve been offended had he not been so amused by it.

Fedya rose to his feet slowly and wearily. His joints creaked as he straightened his back. “Well, I’m not gonna turn down a good night’s rest.”

“Good man.”

Fedya clapped Anatole’s back. “Give a shout if you need anything, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Anatole said as Fedya stepped through the door. “Get some sleep.”

He plopped down on the bed, ignoring the way Natasha drew her knees to her chest and scooted away from him. “He’s a nightmare when he’s tired,” Anatole said, shaking his head. “I swear, he’s almost as bad as Lena.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Natasha snapped.

Anatole held his hands up in mock-surrender. “Sorry. I just thought you might want to get your mind off of things.”

“You won’t be able to help with that.”

“I do have something that I think’ll make you feel better.”

Natasha snorted. “Impossible. Unless it’s your own arrest warrant.”

Anatole raised an eyebrow and delved into his jacket pocket, pulling out her hatpin. “Here you go.”

She stared at it disbelievingly. Quickly, with a dart of her sleeves, she snatched it out of his hands. “You’re giving it back to me? After what I did?”

Anatole shrugged. “It didn’t work the first time. I’m sure you’re clever enough to know it won’t work a second time.” Natasha glared at him, and he shot her a smile. “Look, doll, even if you got past me, there are another eight people in the house and we’re in the middle of nowhere. Trying to leave is a waste of time.”

“Then why?” she snapped. “Why’re you letting me have it at all, if it’s so pointless?”

He shrugged again. “I’m not stupid. I understand the situation you’re in is a little…uncomfortable. I just thought it’d make you feel safer.”

It must have, if the look on her face was anything to go by. Her eyes flickered back to the scratch marks she had left him earlier that day. She looked satisfied, proud even. Like she was thinking of trying to slice him to ribbons with that stupid pin again.

“Why did you come back?” she said. Very ungrateful-sounding, considering what he had just done for her. Well, he supposed, she was under a good deal of stress. Impoliteness he could let slide in times like this.

“Look, someone’s gotta keep an eye on you. And I thought you’d prefer me to Fedya.”

She flushed a dark red, and her hand dove into her pocket. For the pin, no doubt. Load of good, that was gonna do her. But she seemed to feel a little safer with it buried between her knuckles, at least. Good. That was good.

“This isn’t decent,” she said, her eyes hard and narrow. And distrusting. _That_ , now, that wasn’t so good.

“I don’t see how,” he said casually. “We’re not going to do anything to make it indecent. Unless it’s considered improper to get a good night’s sleep nowadays.”

“You know what I mean. I have a husband. And I don’t trust you.”

“I won’t do anything improper. Scout’s honor.”

“You say that a lot. ‘Scout’s honor’. I’m starting to think you don’t really know what ‘honor’ means.”

Anatole was torn between being offended and trying to remain good-natured. He chose the latter, knowing that he would have plenty of time to feel offended once he saw Hélène and Fedya in the morning. “Different brand of honor, sweetheart,” he said with an easy smile.

Natasha turned her head away with a huff. Weird. Usually his smiles were much more effective. Most people would’ve been chummy with him by now.

 _Give it time, Tolya_ , he told himself.

“Look, it’s getting late. I think we’d both best get some shuteye.”

“I’ll take the bed,” she said instantly, and dropped herself onto the mattress as if to prove her point. “You can stay on the floor.”

It struck him as more than a little comical that of the two of them, she was the one doing the delegating, but he sat on the ground and leaned against the door without protest. This arrangement was fine by him. Better than being stuck sleeping in the car, which he had had to do on numerous occasions. Or in the shed. Or out in the open with nothing but their sleeping bags to shield them from the midsummer heat and mosquitos. Or in that goddamn smoke-infested dust-ridden pantry. So long as he woke up with all his limbs relatively intact, as he had managed to do thus far, he would tolerate it. “Fine by me,” he said.

But that didn’t placate Natasha at all, and if anything, she looked even more on-edge than she had before. She grasped the pin again and held it out in his direction. “You try anything in the night, if I hear so much as a floorboard creak, I’ll stick you where it hurts with the business end of this. Understood?”

Oh, she had fire. Still hadn’t given in, the stubborn little thing. It was equal parts amusing and impressive, which he was more than happy to acknowledge.

Anatole raised his hands. “Wouldn’t dream of it, darling.”

The fire soon proved to be considerably more tiresome than he had anticipated. He could have understood jumpiness for the first half hour. An hour, even, was reasonable enough. But later that night, when it was nearing early morning, she still hadn’t relaxed or stopped tossing and turning in bed, muttering strings of words under her breath that he couldn’t quite make out, but he could hear from the threatening note in her voice that she was either scheming or worrying. Both, probably.

Anatole sat upright with a tired sigh. “Is something the matter?”

The muttering stopped. He heard sheets shuffling from the corner of the room. “Why would you ask that?”

He shrugged. “Common courtesy? Concern? Take your pick.”

“Huh.” More shuffling. Angry shuffling, now. Like she was kicking the sheets over the footboard. “Courtesy. That’s a funny word for a situation like this. For a man like you.”

“Is there any reason you’ve been making a racket since I turned the lights off?”

“Anger? Hatred?” Something that sounded like fabric tore. Dear God. Was she vivisecting the mattress now, in place of him? “Take your pick.”

“How witty.”

“Were you expecting a different answer? For all I know you could decide to kill me in the middle of the night.”

He had, to be honest. The mattress was lumpy. The room was too hot. The sheet were too scratchy. All complaints he had anticipated. Anything but _that_.

“I’m not a threat to you, Tasha. I don’t even have a gun, for Pete’s sake. You could probably jump me in the middle of the night with that toothpick of yours. You’ve done it once before.”

“But I’m still a prisoner,” she snapped.

Anatole shrugged again. “Probably not for very long. If everything goes well.”

She swallowed heavily, drawing her feet up onto the mattress. “And what if things go badly?”

“I don’t think they will. They usually go well.”

Natasha’s voice was horrified. “How often do you do this?”

“Often enough to know.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

“You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said. “Just take me back, and I’ll talk to Andrei. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you, I promise.”

“Sorry, doll. I don’t call the shots around here. Truth be told, I’m not so fond of the whole ‘kidnap-and-ransom’ schtick myself, but I’m not high up enough on the totem pole to make decisions. That’s Hélène’s gig.”

Natasha tilted her head to the side with a quizzical look. He could see her a little better, now that his eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness of the room. “Hélène? She’s the one in charge?”

Anatole frowned. “Who did you think was—oh, Fedya?” When Natasha nodded shyly, he burst into laughter. “Oh, you’re funny. Fedya’s her right-hand, but he doesn’t get a say either.”

She blinked, bewildered, like he had just suggested that the moon was made of cheese. “So she and Fedya aren’t a couple?”

“Oh, they are,” he said, and then furrowed his brow quizzically. “Kinda. Depends on what day of the week it is, honestly. The two of them can fight like no one else.”

Natasha sat back and refocused her gaze on the opposite wall, scandalized. “All of this…it isn’t proper.”

“Is that your new favorite word?”

“But it’s not right.”

He raised his eyebrows. “No one’s trying to say it is.”

“What’s a boy like you doing running around with these hooligans? You’re young. There’s better things to do in life than this.”

“I’ve never known anything different.”

Natasha primly folded her hands in her lap. “You should be at home working a respectable job. Don’t you have a wife to support?”

Anatole snorted. Almost laughed. “None to speak of.”

“A family?”

“I’ve got Lena and a brother out in New York, but we don’t really talk about him.”

“I don’t imagine your parents would be happy to see their children in this line of business.”

He laughed again, a little louder this time. “Happy? Darling, this _is_ the family business. Do you think they find guys like me off the street to work these gigs? Our dad ran this operation for years before Lena took over.”

“Why is Hélène in charge?”

Anatole shrugged. “She was next in line and Papa wanted her to take over. When he died, she became the boss.”

“How old was she?”

Anatole paused to calculate. “I was fifteen or sixteen, so she would have been nineteen, I think.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “So young,” she murmured.

“She was an old nineteen,” Anatole mused. “And she’s wanted this her whole life.”

“And what about Fedya?”

“Been here long as I can remember.”

“And this house?”

Anatole shrugged. “It’s a safehouse. It’s not my favorite. There’s one by the lake that’s gorgeous in the summer. But we’ve only been here for about a month and it’s already falling ap—”

Anatole stopped as he realized, with a quiet flush of embarrassment, that she had been grilling him for information, and in his overly eager-to-please daze, he had sang like a canary. Hélène, obsessively private, secretive Hélène, would have been furious.

Perhaps Natasha was a bit more wily than he had given her credit for.

“Well, I’m tired, so I’m going to hit the sack,” he said, before he could spill anything else that he shouldn’t have let slip. “Goodnight, Natasha.”

“ _I’m_ not tired.”

“Sweetheart,” he said politely, “I get that you’re restless, but if you don’t mind, I’m trying to sleep here.”

“I do mind,” she said coldly. She was smiling a little now. Like she was laughing at an inside joke with herself. Or like he had just lost something to her. “If I can’t sleep, then you shouldn’t be able to either.”

Anatole clucked and turned over on his other side so that he was facing the door and not her. He pulled the pillow over his head for good measure, in case that wasn’t enough.

“It’s very rude to ignore people, you know,” she said.

The pillow, unfortunately, did nothing to muffle her voice.

“Shhh,” he murmured. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

He heard the mattress springs groan and creak. No footsteps followed. She was probably shuffling about again. At least she hadn’t decided to walk over to his corner of the room and stab him. “Well, what if I want to talk now?”

“No talking. Just sleeping,” he hummed.

“Considering that you’ve kidnapped me, the least you could do is let me talk to you. I’m bored. I want some entertainment.”

Anatole rolled over to face her. “I’m very sorry to hear that.” He turned back on his side. “As I said before, goodnight.”

“You’re not very entertaining, you know.”

“I’m not a court jester.”

“What are you, then?”

“A man who needs some sleep. Goodnight.”

“Just you wait till my husband gets his hands on you,” she said, with an unusual air of calm. “The whole lot of you. He’ll make sure you hang for this.”

“Charming. Goodnight.”

“That’s if I don’t get my hands on you first.”

Anatole lazily rolled over onto his back, spread-eagle. He let the pillow drop to the floor. “Is there anything I could do or give to you that’d make you keep quiet?”

“You could let me go,” she said.

“Something other than that?”

Natasha scoffed. “No.”

“Do you want your pillows fluffed? An extra blanket? Some food?”

“I want you gone.”

Anatole side-eyed her, then let his head flop back against the pillow. “Well, I tried.”

“How can you sleep?” she spat. “You’re keeping someone _hostage_.”

“I’m _not_ sleeping currently because of your incessant chatter. And it’s not like you’re being treated badly.”

“Your friend manhandled me.”

“And you broke his nose. I think your ledger’s pretty even there.”

“I’m locked in a room with a man I don’t know.”

“I’ve been helping you since you got here—”

“Yeah, well, I only let you because I thought you were a hostage too.”

“—and I’m just trying to sleep in—well that's not _my_ fault.”

Natasha stared furiously at the mold stain on the ceiling. “You seemed nicer than them.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s not saying much.”

“Oh. Well, then.”

“But now that I know what a two-faced _ass_ —”

“Alright, I think I’ve had enough of this chat,” he said, and rolled over onto his side again. “Goodnight.”

“I could always smother you in your sleep,” she said after a moment’s silence.

“Goodnight.”

“If the pin wasn’t enough.”

“Don’t mention that to Fedya or he’ll take away the pillows,” he grumbled.

“Or I could strangle you with the bedsheets.” She pantomimed throttling something in the air, imagining it was his neck. “I think they’re long enough.”

“That sounds like a hassle,” he said. “You’d have to strip the mattress and everything.”

“It’d be worth it. To see your face go purple. Do you think your eyes would bug out, like they do in films?”

“I could always tell Hélène about these murderous inclinations of yours,” he said calmly. “I’m sure she’d still be willing to tie you up.”

Natasha tilted her head to the side. “But you won’t, will you? I think you’re too fond of me for that. Or you’d’ve told them what I did earlier today.”

She saw Anatole’s hand fly to his throat unconsciously. He remained silent.

“I knew it,” she tutted with a triumphant grin. “You’re nothing but a giant softie, aren’t you?”

“Oh, shush.”

Natasha pushed the sheets off the bed and sat up straight, leaning her back against the headboard. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. “Will you be honest with me?”

“What?”

“Are you… _they_ going to hurt me?”

Anatole was quiet for a while. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “I mean, you’ve been a massive pain so far and they’ve invested this much energy into you already. I wouldn’t push it, though. You don’t want to give Lena too much trouble or she might decide you aren’t worth it after all.”

Natasha gulped.

“But she really wants the ransom money. So you’re probably safe for now.”

“Anatole, has she ever…would she ever _kill_ someone?”

“It’s late,” he said firmly. “And we should both sleep. Goodnight, Natasha.”

Finally, she went silent. Anatole breathed a sigh of relief, pulled the pillow over his face, and squeezed his eyes shut.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We always love feedback in any way/ shape/ form!


	4. The Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fedya almost has a moment to himself.

The bath water was cold. It always was, and Fedya knew he should’ve been grateful for it on a hot summer night like this, but all it did was remind him of just how beaten-down the rest of the house was. Cold water. Busted-up electrical lines. Leaky pipes, leaky roof, leaky anything-that-could-leak. It wasn’t much of a downgrade from his childhood home, but he had seen enough of the Kuragins to know that there were better ways to live life. Ways that didn’t constantly alternate between shootouts and safehouses.

It was exciting, sure, but it wasn’t the sort of excitement he needed or wanted, and everything in between the excitement was boring and too nerve-wracking to enjoy in a way that neither card games nor tormenting Bezukhov could alleviate, which was really saying something. Even bathing had become a rare luxury—with cold water, at that, but then again, cold water was better than no water at all, and he wasn’t going to open his mouth to make a pointless complaint, not when there wasn’t even anyone to complain _to_.

Fedya sighed and propped his feet up on the rim of the tub. The water had wrinkled the pads of his fingers like raisins. He had once tried to bring his guitar into the bath, not out of seriousness but more to make Hélène laugh—God only knew she needed a laugh every once in a while—but his soapy, wrinkly hands had kept slipping and gliding over the strings like someone had doused them with the machine lubricant he had to use on the engine to keep the old car chugging along.

She had laughed anyway, watching him fumble like a moron. She had laughed even harder when it had slipped out of his grip altogether and fallen into the bath. The guitar had been ruined by the water, but it had been worth it, if only for that.

Fedya went stiff as he heard the doorknob jiggle.

 _Shit_.

This, in the very long list of things that he neither wanted nor needed, probably came dead first, if not as a close runner-up. He should have locked the door. Locked it, and jammed the backrest of a chair beneath the door handle, in case that hadn’t been enough. He should’ve known better than to think any of these morons would even think of something as ordinary and common-sense as privacy. These things tended to get shoved to the backburner when you lived out your days running from safehouse to safehouse and dodging bullets, though he somehow had managed to retain it, only by virtue, probably, of his being a stubborn hardass by nature and having been born a Dolokhov and therefore even more of a stubborn hardass by nature.

“I’m in here,” he snapped in the general direction of the hallway, but the doorknob turned anyway. “Goddammit, I said I’m—!”

It was only Hélène. Fedya relaxed at once.

“You gave me a fright,” he said, leaning his head back against the rim. “I coulda sworn you were Anatole or Denisov for a second.”

Or Boris—the footsteps had been light enough—but he abandoned that thought quickly.

She folded her arms across her chest, unamused. Not that he had expected a different reaction. “What are you doing here?”

He swished his arms back and forth, and the water sloshed around in the tub until it nearly threatened to spill over onto the floor. It had a million times before. The tiling around the tub was black, mold-eaten and rotted through. Hélène wrinkled her nose when she saw it.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” he said blandly. “Bathing, Lena. That’s what people do in bathtubs.”

“You know what I meant, you jackass.”

Fedya shrugged. “I wanted some time by myself.”

Hélène raised an eyebrow. “And the girl?”

He shrugged again. “Your brother’s watching her.” When Hélène’s expression collapsed into a look of dismay, he sighed. “Come on, Lena. He’s responsible enough.”

“I asked you to do _one_ thing,” she huffed, “and you couldn’t even do that.”

“Lena—”

“How am I supposed to get any respect from the others if my right-hand man won’t even listen to me?”

“No one knows,” Fedya said calmly. “But they’re going to if you don’t—would you close the door, please?—calm down.”

Something in her eyes hardened and sharpened. She leaned back against the door, pushing it shut with her hip. The lock clicked into place with a quiet _pop_. “I’d be calm if it weren’t for that little brat you insisted on dragging along with us.”

Fedya propped his feet up on the edge of the tub. “You’re still worrying about her?”

“What are we going to _do_?”

“It’s nothing we haven’t done before,” he said firmly.

Hélène shook her head. “Something about this one is different.”

“There’s nothing different about her. You’re only saying that because you’re frazzled.” He leaned back with a mischievous grin. “You ought to put your feet up.”

“I ought to put you through the window.”

“Don’t be so cold, lover,” Fedya chided. “The water’s icy enough.”

“Only you,” Hélène muttered, “would lounge in a cold bath.”

“What can I say?” He gestured grandly towards the rest of the grubby bathroom and the mold patches along the walls. “I’m spoilt for choice here. It’d be a lot warmer if you joined me, though.”

Hélène balanced herself on the rim of the tub, idly stirring the water with one hand.

“Come in.”

“I’ve already washed.”

Fedya’s grin creeped a little further across his face. “That wasn’t what I asked.”

She rolled her eyes as she yanked her shift over her head and clambered into the tub. Fedya scooted over to the other end to make room for her.

“C’mere,” he murmured, reaching for her.

Hélène allowed herself to be pulled to the other end of the tub and into his arms.  

Fedya ran his hands down her arms before coming back to her shoulders. He dug his thumbs into her shoulder blades, slowly working out the tension that had gathered there.

“I can hear you thinking from here,” he said. “What’s going on in that pretty little head of yours?”

“Drubetskoy.”

“You did what you had to do. You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

Hélène raised an eyebrow, her eyes still trained on the curve of the sink. Or on the patch of mold on the wall—it was hard to tell. There wasn’t much to look at in this room. “I don’t.”

“Then what about him?”

“He’s not the only one who doesn’t— _didn’t_ trust me. At least he had the courtesy to be upfront about it.”

Fedya chuckled. “And you had the courtesy to put a bullet between his ribs. These things happen.”

Hélène bristled. “I couldn’t let him speak to me like that.”

“Of course not. Like I said, you did what had to be done.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that none of those jackasses take me seriously.”

“They’ll take you seriously after Drubetskoy.” Hélène sighed and Fedya squeezed her shoulders. “You’re just stressed because of the girl.”

“Volkov is already giving me shit about Drubetskoy,” she muttered. “I can’t keep offing idiots who disagree with me.”

“It’s an option.”

She shot him a glare. He closed his mouth.

“This is stupid,” she muttered. “I shouldn’t have left Anatole alone with her. I’m gonna go check on them.”

Hélène made a move to sit up, but Fedya pushed down on her shoulders and stretched his legs out across the tub on either side of her, boxing her in. “Relax. There’s nothing to worry about.”

“You saw what she did to his neck,” she said. “And only after one day. If we keep her much longer, we’ll be bringing Tolya home in a dozen plastic bags.”

Fedya chuckled and rubbed at a particularly tight knot on her left shoulder. “But that isn’t something you need to worry about tonight.”

Hélène sighed and leaned her head against his shoulder. “If I don’t, then who will?”

“Pierre will keep an ear out. Ivan and Denisov too. You’re allowed to have some time to yourself.”

At that, her head jolted upright. “I think I hear footsteps in the living room.”

“For Christ’s sake, Lena, stop fussing so much.”

“Could be one of them. Maybe he’s left her alone. Or maybe she’s gotten out.”

Fedya leaned down and brushed a kiss across her jaw. “Let me take care of it,” he murmured. “Let me take care of _you_.”

“Fedya…”

“Relax, dollface, I’ve got you.”

Hélène sighed again and leaned back against his chest.

“There’s a good girl,” he said, playing with her hair. “You hear any more footsteps now?”

She shot him a halfhearted scowl and slapped his arm.

“I thought not.”

“You shut your trap.”

“You seem upset. I don’t like seeing you this way.”

Hélène huffed. “I don’t like _being_ this way. I don’t like not being on top of things.”

“But you always seem to be upset. You’re always stressed. You’re always unhappy.”

“They’re going to turn on me eventually,” she said quietly. “Aren’t they?”

Fedya hesitated. “Not if they know what’s good for them.”

“Which they don’t.”

“I don’t know, Lena,” he said. “It’s hard to tell.”

Hélène let out a sigh and tipped her head back against his shoulder, staring at the ceiling. “My old man would’ve known how to handle this. He’d give ‘em one look and scare the shit out of them and there’d’ve been no talk of insurrection or anything. It’s maddening, Fed. All the screaming and hollering in the world won’t buy me an ounce of their respect.”

“I dunno, I think the screaming and hollering helped,” he mused.

“Not as much as Papa’s gun. No one takes me seriously.”

“ _I_ take you seriously,” he said. “Always have.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t count. They still think I’m the little girl Papa dumped on them.”

“You were a wild little thing. Even then. God knew I was afraid of you.”

Hélène rolled her eyes. “You were afraid of my father.”

“I was afraid of both of you.” He ran a thumb across her cheekbone. It was rare to see Fedya reminiscing, but he always told the same speech whenever he did. Hélène could have easily followed along word for word. “You were so beautiful. _Powerful_. I used to think you were the most frightening woman in the world. Imagine how shocked I was to learn you were only sixteen.”

“And you were just a scruffy little driver,” she mused, toying one of his curls between her fingers. “I wondered if my father had pulled you out of the gutter.”

“Because he had,” he said, grinning. “Who’d’ve thought we’d end up here?”

Hélène chuckled and ran a hand down his arm. “We make a good team.”

“Your old man would be proud of you.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Of course he would. He wouldn’t’ve put you in charge if he didn’t know you’d do great things.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Look at yourself. You’re alive, Anatole’s alive, _I’m_ alive.” Hélène snickered, and he smiled. “He’d be damn proud of you. He couldn’t’ve asked for a better kid.”

Hélène sighed again and sank a little deeper into the water. “I may be a good kid, but I’m a shit boss.”

“That’s not true.”

“You know it is.”

Fedya frowned and kissed her temple. “You aren’t solving anything by fretting.”

“Yeah, well, relaxing isn’t gonna fix anything either.”

Now his grin took on a decidedly smug look. “You know what’d be _really_ nice and relaxing?”

Hélène raised an eyebrow. He was going off-script here. “What?”

“The cottage.”

Back on the script. A different one, but a script nonetheless.

“Oh, _this_ again?” she groaned.

“Just imagine it,” he said, stretching his hands out in front of the two of them, as if he were picturing it in his mind’s eye. Like he expected her to do the same. “Nice little house in the country. A white picket fence. A little vegetable garden out back.”

Hélène snorted. “That sounds boring as hell.”

“Boring is safe. Boring is nice and trustworthy. Boring doesn’t get you shot. You’ll end up with a bullet between your ears one day, with the way we carry on.”

“I don’t _want_ ‘nice’. I wouldn’t have thought you would, either.”

Fedya sighed. “I’m just tired, Lena.”

“Tired?” she said. “Of what?”

He gestured noncommittally. “I dunno. But I’m tired. I’d like to think that there’s something else in my future besides this.”

“We’re _making_ our future, Fedya.”

“We’re making a right mess of things is what we’re making,” he snarled. “We won’t _have_ a future if we don’t stop soon.”

“We’re making a legacy, Fedya. I’m gonna be remembered as more than Vasily Kuragin’s daughter. I’m telling you that now.”

“Your father got shot doing this, Lena,” he said sharply. “ _That’s_ what he’s remembered for.”

Hélène’s mouth hardened. “He got sloppy. I’m not sloppy.”

“Really? Because we have a hostage that we didn’t plan for and nothing to show for it.”

“I got sloppy once,” she said. “It’s not gonna happen again.”

Fedya sighed. “Sometimes once is all it takes.” Hélène pulled away from him, and he reached for her. “This could be our last job. Drop off the girl, get the money, and leave all of this behind us.”

She was quiet for a while, which must have meant that she was considering his words. “I’ve given up too much,” she said finally. “This all…it has to mean something.”

He sighed again, and reached to the floor for the bottle of whiskey that he had stashed behind the towel stack. “Have a drink. You need one.”

“I shouldn’t.”

“Yes, you should,” he said firmly.

Hélène sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “I need to keep my wits about me. In case our new guest tries to pull another fast one on us.”

Fedya pushed the bottle into her hand. “You need to unwind.”

“Fedya…”

“For fuck’s sake, take a goddamn drink, Lena.”

Hélène took a sip from the bottle, wrinkling her nose as the familiar fire shot through her. The room was cold, but her chest burned.

“That was good,” she said, breathless, and promptly took another swig.

“That’s my girl. Better?”

Hélène nodded. “Much.”

Fedya bent his head and kissed her throat. “What did I tell you?”

She tipped her head to the side and leaned back against him more heavily. “That feels good.”

“Doesn’t it feel nice not to be in charge for once?”

Hélène’s back snapped ramrod straight and she shot him a warning look. “I _am_ in charge.”

“Lena—”

“I am _always_ in charge, Fyodor,” she snapped. “Don’t forget that.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I don’t care what you meant. Don’t let it happen again.”

Fedya sighed and leaned back against the rim of the rub. She felt the muscles of his chest tense and then relax against her back. “Alright,” he murmured. “I apologize.”

“Good man.”

“Still,” he said quietly. “You don’t always have to be the boss, you know. Not with me.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I don’t. So why don’t you tell me?”

Hélène bit her lip. “No weaknesses, and no opportunities to find them,” she said softly.

Fedya sighed as he recognized her father’s words. “No one thinks you’re weak.”

“Yuri and Volkov do.”

“Fuck them. And fuck what they think.”

“And _that’s_ what you don’t understand. What the hell do you think I’m gonna do if they decide to turn on me?”

“But why do you have to be in charge now? When it’s just me?”

“Are you gonna keep ragging on about this?”

“What am I to you?”

Hélène stared at him. “What?”

His voice was hollow and hard, but not angry. More pensive, something almost a little shaken, even. “Do you see me as a lackey?”

“What sorta question is that?”

Fedya shot her a stern look. “I’m serious, Lena.”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if you were a lackey. We wouldn’t be naked in the bath together if you were just a lackey.”

“Fine, so I’m not a lackey. What am I?”

Hélène shrugged. “Do you have to have a name for everything?”

“It helps.”

She smiled, tipping her head back. “You’re my right-hand man. Only one here I trust.”

“Not even your brother?”

Hélène squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled. “There’s a difference between trusting and loving someone.”

“There doesn’t have to be.”

The corner of her mouth quirked upwards. “Maybe not.”

“Hélène Kuragina admitting she might not always be right? Call the press,” Fedya said lightly.

Instead of reprimanding him for his snark, she laughed. “Don’t get used to it.”

“I’ve known you long enough to not expect miracles.”

“How long has it been?” she murmured. “Eight years?”

“Something like that.”

She toyed with his fingers. “Eight long years.”

Fedya chuckled and kissed the top of her head. “Wouldn’t trade ‘em.”

She kissed his knuckle. “You’re not half-bad yourself.”

“Flatterer.”

She kissed him again, along the inside of his wrist. “I wouldn’t have anyone else as my right hand. No one but you, Fyedka.”

Fedya’s heart jumped.

“I love you,” he said softly. “Come Hell or high water, I’m by your side.”  

Hélène went stiff. All was silent, save for the faint _drip-drip_ of the still-leaky tap.

“Fedya,” she said, after a long, deafening pause. “We’ve been over this. My answer hasn’t changed.”

Fedya flushed bright red and turned his head away. “Forget I said anything.”

Hélène sighed. “You’re upset.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it,” he muttered. He stood up, reaching for a towel. “I’d better go check on Anatole.”

“You said you thought they were fine.”

“And you said they weren’t.”

“Just sit back down.”

Fedya sank back into the water and crossed his arms rebelliously.

Hélène gave him a stern glare. “You can’t get this upset every time we have this conversation. God knows we’ve talked about it enough.”

“That’s not the _point_ , Lena.”

“I’m only saying what I’m saying because I care about you.”

“Lena…”

“I care about you more than anyone except Anatole. I would trust you with my life. And that’ll have to be enough,” she said tightly. “Take it or leave it.”

He wasn’t satisfied with this, but he shut his mouth anyway.

“I ought to go and check on everyone,” she muttered. “Make sure Tolya hasn’t incited a riot yet.”

“Fine. Don’t wake me up when you come to bed.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

She stepped out of the tub, dripping water behind her, and pulled her shift over her head. Quietly, like a silent dart, she slipped out into the hallway, and he heard her footsteps sliding down the corridor and then up the stairs to her room.

Now that she had left, now that he had one less body to warm the tub, the water was pitch-cold. It left him too numb to even shiver. He should have gotten out too. Should have dried off and dressed and tried to catch his shuteye, but his limbs were heavy and dead with exhaustion.

Five more minutes, he told himself.

Sighing, Fedya reclined back against the rim of the tub and looked up at the ceiling. He squeezed his eyes shut, and saw nothing but blackness and a sunburst of colorful light across his retinas.


	5. The Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha runs into an old friend where she least expects it.

Natasha groaned as she blinked her eyes open. She could already feel her impending headache, the result of tossing and turning anxiously all night. 

Then there came the sound of the voice she wanted to hear least.

“How’d you sleep?”

Natasha shot Anatole a hard glare. He was still tucked away in the corner of the room in front of the door with his pillow held over his stomach. He hadn’t changed his clothes from the day before, she noticed. “I couldn’t. I was worried you might try to murder me in the night.” 

He yawned and stretched his arms over his head. The frayed hem of his shirt rode up as he did. It was a little short for him, she noticed, a size or two at least. Like he had accidentally swapped out his shirt for one of Fedya’s. She almost laughed at that thought, before he opened his mouth again and soured her moment of humor. “That’s a shame. I was thinking the same thing. Still slept fine. Hardwood floor and all.”

Natasha clucked loudly and shook her head, the way she had seen Marya do when she wanted to look particularly disapproving or insulting. He didn’t deserve a good night’s sleep, the bastard. Perhaps she should’ve chanced it again with the hatpin or one of the bedsheets while he was out cold. 

At least he hadn’t snored. She would have actually strangled him if he had.

“You’re awfully chipper this morning,” she muttered.

He shrugged with a playful grin. “Not every day I get to wake up with a beautiful woman.”

Natasha flinched and drew her knees up to her chest. Dear God. Was this moron actually trying to flirt with her? 

The hatpin. She still had the hatpin. A jab in the sternum. The throat. Anywhere. If he wouldn’t leave her alone, she could at least make him regret it.

“You’ll wake up dead before that happens with me,” she said. 

“Are you always this grumpy in the morning?”

She scowled. “Having to wake up to your ugly mug would make anyone grumpy.”

Anatole raised his eyebrows. “Can’t say that’s been a common response after a night with me.”

Natasha considered slapping him. It would’ve been easy. A quick backhand across the cheek. Or with an open palm, whichever would have stung more. He wouldn’t expect it, and the best thing was he may actually be too shocked to retaliate if she did.

But then again, knowing her luck, which had gone to shit as of recent, he would probably only enjoy it, and that would be even worse than not having slapped him at all. Damn him.

“Keep dreaming,” she said instead.

“Ah, well,” he said, grinning. “Always tonight.”

A slap he might appreciate. A hatpin to the eye, now, nobody could enjoy that.

“I can’t believe you actually slept in your daywear,” she said, only for the sake of being irritating.

“I didn’t,” he said, frowning. He tugged at his collar, as if in demonstration. “I changed last night. I was  wearing a suit yesterday.”

“But when did you have time to change?” Natasha sputtered.

“After you finally went to sleep.”

She had been alone. Unguarded. He had been gone with his back turned and his guard down, and she could have gotten away.

“I cannot believe you,” she snapped.

He had the audacity to wink at her. “Don’t tell Lena, okay? She’d lose her damn mind if she knew that I left.”

“But she wouldn’t hurt you if she knew, right?”

“Lena? No. But God above, I’d never hear the end of it.”

Natasha felt her heart skip a beat in excitement. “Well, what if you do it again?”

“What?”  

“You’re going to have to go change again. Just look the other way and leave the door unlocked,  _ please _ . I’ll be quiet, and you can blame me.”

“Don’t have to go change again,” Anatole said blithely. “Hence the trousers and shirt.”

“Or the next time you need to use the bathroom.”

“Been there and back already, doll.”

“You’ll have to go more than once a day. Surely.”

“Tasha,” he said, “please.”

Natasha huffed and crossed her arms. “You could have warned me you were going to leave to go change. Given me a fighting chance.”

Anatole shrugged. “Hey, I usually don’t sleep in anything at all. Thought you wouldn’t like that.”

Natasha’s jaw dropped, utterly scandalized. She didn’t even have time to come up with a suitably witty retort to that, because he moved on, jumping to the next topic with all the erratic speed of a jackrabbit.

“Do you want a change of clothes? You’re a little smaller than Lena, but her stuff might fit you.”

“No.”

“How about some coffee? Something to eat?”

“I want you sitting in a prison cell,” she snapped.

Anatole shrugged and turned back to the door. “One black coffee it is.” 

“With a noose around your neck.”

“Is there anything at all that I can do to make you more amenable to my person?”

Natasha considered this for a moment. “ _ Die _ .”

He hung his head, sighing. “Jesus. There’s no pleasing you, is there?” 

“I don’t want to talk to you anymore,” Natasha said coldly.

Anatole put up his hands in mock-surrender. “I can find someone else to look after you. Can’t promise they’ll be as friendly as me, though.” 

“I don’t care.”

“Have it your way, darling.” He opened the door and stuck his head through to the hallway. “Hey, Bezukhov! Wanna do me a favor?”

“Not really,” came a tired, drawn voice.

Natasha’s head shot up immediately. No. It couldn’t be.

Anatole grinned and rolled his eyes conspiratorially at Natasha before turning back to the hallway. “But you will anyways, right?” He playfully elbowed the person. “Right?”

There came a heavy sigh. “I suppose I will.”

Natasha sucked in a deep breath as Pierre lumbered through the door. He looked older somehow, tired and sad, but she would have recognized him no matter what.

“I’m going to go grab something to eat. Keep an eye on Tasha here for me?” said Anatole.

Pierre blushed as he caught Natasha’s eye.

Anatole chuckled and elbowed Pierre in the ribs. “Don’t get any ideas, Bezukhov. She’s a married woman. I’ve already gotten told off, anyway.”

Natasha was too furious to respond to that.

“I apologize for him,” Pierre said quietly.

Anatole shrugged and nodded at Pierre. “Watch her, or Lena’ll have your head. Or  _ she’ll _ ”—he gestured towards Natasha—“have ours.”

Pierre gulped. Anatole slapped him on the shoulder.

“You’re the best, man.”

Anatole winked at Natasha and ducked through the door. He was gone a second later.

“Thank God you’re here,” Natasha breathed, once his footsteps faded off. “I was so  _ scared _ , Pierre.” She threw her arms around his neck. 

“I’m so sorry, Nat,” Pierre whispered, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I’m so sorry you had to go through all of this.”

“I’m fine,” she breathed. “We’re going to be alright.”

They would. They had to be, now that he was here.

“Have you been here all this time?”

Pierre ducked his head. “Ever since I fought with Andrei,” he said. “I’m not sure how much he told you. We had a falling-out last year.”

“No specifics,” Natasha said. “He said there was a woman. That you were making a mistake.”

“He was right,” Pierre muttered. “I shoulda listened to him. But I didn’t, and now I’m here.”

“What happened between the two of you?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Pierre said. “I’ll talk to him after I get you home.”

“What do you know about Hélène? Anatole told me she was in charge.”

Pierre sighed. “She’s hard to read. She was different at first.”

“Different how?” 

“She’s a master manipulator. And I fell for it, like the idiot that I am.”

“Me too,” Natasha said. “They just seemed like such a sweet couple.”

He let out a dry, bitter laugh. “That’s what I thought about her, when she first started on me. She realized I had something she wanted. And that I’d cave.”

Natasha frowned. “What did she want?” 

Pierre turned his gaze to the floor. He looked embarrassed. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” he muttered. “I was stupid.”

“How well do you know Fedya?”

“He’s just a thug,” Pierre said in a hard voice. His hands curled into fists at his sides. “He’s stupid and vicious and trigger-happy and he’s wrapped around her little finger. He’s the worst of the lot, mark my words.” 

Natasha shivered and drew her arms around herself.

“Anatole isn’t a bad kid. But he’d do anything his sister told him to. No spine, that boy. And no brains either.”

Natasha snorted despite herself. “I picked up on that.” 

Pierre’s face darkened. “Don’t get comfy. Not around any of them, no matter how friendly they may seem. They’re all dangerous, Nat. All of them. Don’t ever forget that.”

“I don’t understand,” Natasha said. “Why they’d listen to her, I mean. Are they afraid not to?”

“Afraid?” said Pierre. “No, I don’t think so. They adore her, which is even worse.”

“That’s  _ better _ ,” Natasha breathed. “Get to her, and we get to them.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m just thinking out loud.”

“There isn’t any ‘getting to’ Hélène. She’s untouchable.”

“But her brother isn’t,” she said. “All I had was a hatpin and I nearly had him. The first day I was here.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I tried taking him hostage. I was so close, Pierre. I coulda done it, but I was afraid of hurting him for real.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll know not to make that mistake again. No second-guessing. That’s what got me caught.”

Pierre sucked in a deep breath. 

“He’s probably going to be on-guard now, though,” Natasha said pensively.

Pierre eyed her uncertainly, but didn’t say anything.

“And Fedya,” she continued, now frowning. “I don’t know how we’re going to get past him. Do you know what their guard schedules are like?”

“Nat—”

“I suppose we’ll have to steal a car too, but that should be no trouble if we can find the keys.”

“Natasha, I can’t—”

“Do you know where they keep them? Is anybody guarding the cars?”

“This isn’t worth it,” Pierre said. “Just be quiet, keep your head down, don’t make a fuss, and nothing will happen to you.”

Natasha pulled away immediately, her face drawn and suspicious. “You sound like one of them.”

“I swear, I’ll find a way to get you back to Andrei,” he said. “But you have to cooperate with them, at least for right now.”

“How  _ dare  _ you,” Natasha spat. “You don’t have the right to come back into my life and tell me to play nice with the people who abducted me.” 

“I’m only trying to help you, Nat. You have to trust me. I’ve made it this far alive. If you want to get out of this mess, we need to work together.”

“But you won’t leave them, will you?”

“I’m doing what I can to survive.”

“We worried about you, you know,” she said in a hard, flat voice. “We mourned you when you didn’t come back. It destroyed Andrei. He hardly sleeps these days for worrying himself sick about you.”

Pain flashed across Pierre’s face and his brow furrowed. “I never meant for this to happen, I swear.”

“You know Andrei,” Natasha hissed. “Think of how terrified he must be. How much  _ pain _ he’s in. That’s your fault, as much as theirs.”

It was then, just before Pierre could open his mouth to respond, that Anatole stepped through the door, precariously balancing two mugs. “I swear,” he said, shaking his head, “Fedya drinks gasoline, not coffee. This stuff is disgusting. Sorry it isn’t hot, Tasha,” he continued obliviously. “I think they must’ve made it a while ago.”

Natasha cradled the mug to her chest numbly, feeling its residual heat warm her, even through her dress.

“Thank you, Anatole,” Pierre said quietly. He lowered his head to avoid meeting Natasha’s eyes.

“I guess you can go now,” Anatole said. “You should see if Lena wants anything. She thinks one of the engines is rattling again.”

“It’s fine,” Pierre said quickly. “I can trade shifts with you, if you’d like. I’ll watch her.”

“No, please leave,” Natasha said to him.

Anatole frowned. “Is everything alright, Tasha?”

Natasha shot him a sardonic look, as if to say,  _ Take a wild guess _ . Of the two men currently standing in front of her, she was having a hard time deciding which she despised the least.

Anatole glared at Pierre. “Christ, Bezukhov, what did you do now?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“Well, clearly you did, or she wouldn’t be so—”

“I want to be left alone,” Natasha snapped. “Both of you, get out.”

Anatole and Pierre turned to her with matching expressions of confusion.

“Can’t do that, sweetheart,” Anatole said finally.

“What’s stopping you? Too afraid of your sister?”

“Absolutely,” Anatole said calmly. “You can have one of us or both of us, but ‘neither’ isn’t an option. I don’t make the rules. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

“Oh, I’d love to,” she muttered under her breath, just quietly enough that he didn’t hear her. Pierre did, if the look on his face was anything to go by.

“So what’s it going to be?” Anatole continued blithely. “You want him or me?”

Fury washed over Natasha like ice cold water, and she started to tremble. This was too much, too much to expect of her, too much to have to live with. She felt tears burning in her eyes, and her breath came in fast and short. She wanted to throw something. Break something. Smash the mug over his head, toss it at the wall, hurl it out the window. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him and scream in his face. She wanted to, she should have, she  _ could _ have, because a second later, he was kneeling in front of her with his hands held out in front of him as if trying to calm a spooked horse.

“Hey, it’s alright,” Anatole said. “Deep breaths. You’re gonna be fine.” 

Natasha was tempted, for a hysterical moment, to dump the contents of her mug over his head.

He seemed to have read her mind, because he took her mug out of her hands and placed it on the night table, sliding onto the bed next to her. 

Pierre reached for her, but Natasha violently recoiled, unintentionally pressing herself against Anatole.

“I don’t want to see your face ever again,” she hissed through tears. 

“Nat, please, just let me explain.”

“I think you should leave,” Anatole said calmly. His hand, the one not still holding his mug, came to a rest at her waist. To her own surprise, she didn’t slap it away. “You’re only going to upset her more.”

“I’m not leaving her alone with you, you scoundrel,” Pierre snapped. “I don’t trust you.”

Anatole narrowed his eyes. For the first time since Natasha had ever met him, he looked truly angry. She hadn’t expected it to be directed at Pierre of all people. 

“Leave,” Anatole said coldly. “Or I’ll get Hélène.”

Pierre’s face immediately went a deep pink. “Fine,” he muttered. He turned to Natasha again. “I apologize, truly. For everything.”

Natasha didn’t respond. She turned away from him as he left, staring blankly at the wall with her arms folded around herself. 

Anatole frowned and reached for her arm. “Are you alright?”

Natasha brushed him off. “Don’t wanna talk about it,” she said crossly.

He shrugged. “Fine by me.” He took a sip of his coffee and immediately spat it back out. “Cold,” he groaned, pouting.

Natasha, to her own surprise, laughed at that. She laughed even harder when his hand tipped just slightly too far forwards and poured cold coffee into his lap.

“Ah, fuck,” he said, and set the mug aside.

“You’re an idiot,” Natasha said quietly.

Anatole shrugged. He grabbed a greased-up rag from the side table and began to dab at the coffee stains, though he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “Not the first to tell me that. Probably not the last.” He grinned at her and winked. “At least these are Fedya’s pants.”

“Does he know that?”

“He doesn’t need to.”

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “He’ll know once they show up drenched in coffee.”

“I’ll just lose ‘em, then.”

“I wonder how you and your sister are related sometimes.”

Anatole shrugged again.

“You’re hard to offend,” Natasha said.

“Life’s too short to take wrong opinions to heart.” He side-eyed her. “You could probably stand to learn that.”

Natasha gasped and slapped his arm. “Don’t be cheeky!” she said, but she was laughing anyway.

“I like your smile. You ought to wear it more often.”

The compliment and its apparent sincerity threw Natasha for a loop. All she could manage to say was “Thank you.


	6. The Initiation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hélène worries about dissent in the ranks. Natasha is dragged into a harebrained scheme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with us through the long wait! We've written a long chapter, and we hope you enjoy! If you like our writing, give our other fics a gander!

Daybreak came with scorching-hot sunrise. Summer was settling in dry; the air lay crisp and heat-heavy in a way that even the draftiness of the house couldn’t alleviate. Hélène had left the blinds open, and now slants of morning sunlight crept across the length of her bed, burning through her eyelids with all the dull glare of a lamp bulb. It was for this reason that she woke up almost an hour before her alarm went off, with a sharp pain between her temples that probably had more to do with last night’s drinking than lack of sleep.

A loud knock at the door startled her out of her drowsy stupor.

“Lena? You up?” came the sound of Fedya’s voice.

“Unfortunately,” she groaned. Her forehead throbbed. The sunlight stung her eyes.

Fedya was quiet for a moment. She heard feet shuffling in the hallway. He had never been able to stand still when he was figuring out what to say. “I made some coffee already if you want breakfast. It’s still in the pot.”

“Black?”

“What do you think?” he said. “There’s no milk left. Black is all you’re getting.”

“Tolya will be thrilled.”

“If he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t have to have any. He’s not up yet anyway. We’ll share it, the two of us.”

“Fine, just lemme get dressed,” she grumbled.

She kicked the covers off, started to her suitcase—she hadn’t unpacked yet, and they weren’t going to stay here long enough to justify hanging her things up in the closet—and began rifling through the semi-folded mess for an outfit.

“Can I come in?”

“No,” she said, slipping off her nightdress. “I’ll come out when I’m ready.”

She heard him sigh on the other side of the door. “Can we talk?”

Socks. A heavy black skirt. A nice blouse, not freshly washed, but acceptable. “We’re talking now, aren’t we?”

The door creaked open anyway. Hélène buttoned up her collar as quickly as she could. “What did I say?” she snapped.

Fedya held up her heels with one hand. “You left these in the hallway last night.”

The circles under his eyes were darker and heavier than usual, and the odd angle of his neck indicated that he’d probably slept funny on it. He had changed since she had last seen him, but his collar was wrinkled and one of his socks was rolled halfway up his calf like he had put on his trousers beforehand and then forgotten to untuck the hems.

“You look like shit,” she said flatly. “Where did you sleep last night?”

“The tub.”

Ah. That explained it. She wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t come to bed the night before, but it stung more than it should have. It wasn’t like Fedya, not to come crawling back to her as soon as he had finished wallowing in his own self-pity.

He was worse than Pierre had been sometimes, moping like this.

“That was stupid,” she said. “There’s a bed here for a reason.”

Fedya crossed his arms and stared her down. “Would I have been allowed in it?”

“I guess we’ll never know.”

They glared at each other for a moment before Hélène decided that there wasn’t any point in dragging their argument out any further. Her anger had long since burnt out anyway, and the headache left no room for her to carry a grudge. She walked over and kissed him on the cheek, and Fedya smiled.

“Does that mean I’ll be allowed in it tonight?”

She looked up at him through her eyelashes, just allowing a hint of a smile to curl her lip. “Try me and see.”

He chuckled and held out his hand for her to take. “C’mon, princess. Let’s get some breakfast. You’re always cryptical when you’re hungry.”

Volkov was standing at the stove when they came in, frying up eggs in a pan. He—like Denisov, Fedya, and Boris, God rest his wicked soul—was among the older recruits, having been around since Vasily had been in charge of things, and little about him had changed since then. In his early thirties, his skin was prematurely wrinkled, but his hair stubbornly clung to its dark russet color even at the temples. It wasn’t unusual to see him up this early, but it was to see him at the stove, which was probably a testament to just how hungry he was. In the pan, the eggs sizzled so loudly they could hear it from the hall. The smell filled the kitchen, so strong that it was almost enough to mask the cigar smoke from the still-hot ash tray on the dining table, but not quite.

“Eggs again?” said Fedya. He didn’t sound happy with his observation.

Volkov smiled as he stirred the eggs around with a spatula. He would have looked more at ease had it been a steering wheel or a shotgun he was handling. “Omelettes. S’all we have. Smokes, gasoline, coffee, and eggs.”

Hélène wrinkled her nose. “We had bread and jam left last night.”

Volkov chuckled, shaking his head, and turned back to the pan. “Well, I guess the mice got to them before we did. I’d say it’s time for a grocery run. Unless you want to start grazing on the Havanas.”

Fedya scoffed. He would probably have starved to death before giving up the Havanas, the stubborn ass, which made the idea all the more tempting to Hélène.

“We’re doing a job today,” she said. “We’ll get groceries while we’re out.”

“What kinda job?”

Hélène shrugged and pulled up a seat at the table, where Volkov had laid out whatever dishware he had been able to dig out of the cabinets. Fedya slid into the chair to her right, probably more out of habit than anything. “Nothing big. Local grocery store. Ten or so minutes down the road.”

Volkov pulled the pan off the burner and dished the eggs out. “Why there?”

“Knew we were running low on food. Figured we might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

“And what’s the plan?”

Hélène smiled at Fedya. “The usual. Married couple.”

“You’re a creature of habit, you know that?”

Hélène shrugged. “It works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As my old man always said.”

Volkov, seemingly satisfied with that, shrugged, and cracked another egg into the pan.

There was an assorted medley of cutlery piled onto the placemat in the middle of the table. She grabbed the closest knife and fork and set to work tearing into her omelette with gusto. It was disgustingly bland, and the yolk was fried to hell and back, but she was too hungry to complain.

“Tastes like cardboard,” Fedya snapped after only one mouthful. Indelicate as always. Fyodor Dolokhov was many things, but subtle was decidedly not one of them. “Jesus, Volkov, what did you cook this in? Dishwater? What, do we not have any salt or pepper left?”

Volkov shrugged. “Don’t like it, don’t eat it.”

Fedya’s cutlery clattered back to the table with a noise that was louder than necessary and eyebrows that were also raised higher than necessary. “Is there nothing else?”

“Nope.”

That was enough to convince him to go back to the omelette. Hélène sighed as she looked down at her almost-empty plate.

Fedya caught her eye. Wordlessly, while Volkov’s back was turned, he reached over and scraped his leftovers onto her plate.

“Fedya,” she began, but he shook his head.

“Volkov, do you want coffee?” he said.

Volkov sat down with his own plate. “Yeah, sure.”

Fedya went to fetch the pot. He stopped at the window first to open the blinds. Sunlight streamed in wide golden slats across the table, and it caught the dust like a handful of glitter tossed into the air.

“Where are the others?” said Hélène.

“Didn’t tell them I was cooking. Wasn’t sure there was enough to go around.”

Hélène frowned. “It’s that bad?”

“We’re almost running on empty.” He frowned. “I could’ve sworn there was more left when I checked last night.”

“Your brother’s going to throw a fit,” said Fedya.

Hélène shrugged. “He’ll live.”

“And the girl? Did we give her dinner last night?” said Volkov.

Her fork paused midway to her mouth. “That’s a good question.”

“You do realize,” Fedya said, with great restraint, as he poured out the coffee, “that the whole point of taking a hostage is that you keep them alive?”

“She’ll be fine. We’ll feed her when we get back.”

Fedya sighed and pushed his chair back. “Whatever you say.”

Hélène frowned. “Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna go get dressed. Shave before someone takes the bathroom.”

“No one else is up yet.”

“They will be once they smell the cooking,” he said over his shoulder.

“So, who are you taking?” Volkov asked as Fedya left.

Hélène drained the last of the coffee and set her mug aside. The light had migrated over to her side of the table. She shuffled her chair to the side rather than shield her eyes from its glare. “Him.”

“Again?”

“It’s just a small job,” Hélène said. “I don’t need you.”

“Why don’t you take Ivan instead? He’s young. He could stand to learn what to do.”

“I don’t need someone who has to learn what to do. I need someone who already knows. Thanks for your concern.”

“You always take him. What’s the damn point of having the rest of us around?”

It probably wasn’t the brightest idea to laugh at that, and the smirk she shot his way was even less sensible, but she couldn’t help it. Nobody had ever accused her of being humble. She didn’t intend to change her wicked ways now. “Because you’re entertaining,” she said airily. “I like watching you lot run around after me like headless chickens.”

Volkov muttered something indignant-sounding under his breath and pushed his chair back.

“I’m sorry,” she said sharply. “What was that?”

“We might not run after you for much longer, the way you’re carrying on.”

“Watch your tone, Volkov.”

“What are you going to do?” he said, leering at her. “Numbers are dwindling, sweetheart. Can’t shoot us all like Boris. You’ll run out of men and bullets pretty quick like that.”

“My leadership decisions are—”

“Questionable at best.”

“—none of your fucking business.”

“Who knows? Maybe you won’t be a leader for much longer either.”

From the hall, they heard footsteps, and fell silent.

“Everything alright?” Fedya said. He was still fixing his cufflinks. It was odd, seeing him with proper cufflinks.

“Of course,” Volkov said politely.

Fedya frowned and turned to Hélène. “Lena?”

“Let’s go,” she said sharply. “We’ve wasted enough time dawdling. I’m going to talk to my brother, and then we’re headed off.”

* * *

 

The room was empty when Natasha woke up.

It was quiet, and the lights were still off, and the pile of blankets in the corner where Anatole had slept the night before was gone, and it was entirely, utterly _empty_.

Natasha bolted upright so quickly that black dots swarmed her vision. Her eyes darted to and fro. She blinked, hoping that they hadn’t deceived her.

She was alone. There was no one with her. Her mind raced with the possibilities, a tangled jumble of half-baked ideas and fears. She could run. There wasn’t anyone here to stop her. Yes, she would sneak out of the room, she was sure she could remember the way to the front door, and she would just walk, as far as her legs could take her, until she found a grocery store, a bank, a motel, _something_.

And then Anatole kicked the door open with a bang that made Natasha jump in her seat, and with that, her little sunburst of hope and happiness evaporated like it had never been there in the first place.

“Morning,” he said chirpily, _irritatingly_ chirpily, and Natasha dearly wished there was a lamp or something on the bedside table to fling at his head.

He had dressed for the day in another ridiculous three-piece suit that was far too nice for anything associated with him and his lot, and the odd jaunt of his hair made it look like he had attached one arm to an electrical wire and the other to a comb and left it at that. His arms were too full to move, hence the kick, she supposed.

“Oh,” she said dully. “It’s you.”

“Couldn’t carry the mugs for coffee,” Anatole said. “But I brought everything else.”

Natasha’s eyebrow shot up. “What is this?”

Anatole looked vaguely bemused. “Breakfast.”

“Not what I meant. Is this some sort of plot to get in my good graces?”

“Just trying to make sure everyone’s fed. The kitchen’s a madhouse on mornings.” He shook his head despondently. “Highwaymen are animals, Tasha, I’m telling you.”

He plopped down on the floor and went about spreading jam across a slice of bread with the flat end of the knife, but there was so little left in the jar he only got a measly lump.

He slid the plate across the floor. Natasha eyed it suspiciously.

“Did you put something in this?” she said.

“Just jam. We’re all out of butter. There’s margarine left, if you’d like some, but it’s not—”

“You,” she said, shaking her head, “have got to be one of the weirdest people I’ve ever has the misfortune of meeting.”

Anatole shrugged. “Would you rather I hadn’t done this?”

 _Fair_ , she thought, and without bothering to give him a reply, she snatched the knife off the ground and began to spread jam on a slice of bread.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he said, eyeing the knife. “Those things are blunt as ballpoint pens.”

Natasha chuckled. “I could always leave you a bruise or two.”

He must have found that at least a little amusing, because he smiled and didn’t even bother to take the knife away from her. “Just don’t waste the jam. S’the last jar we’ve left.”

“You’re more concerned with jam than the safety of your person?”

“It’s strawberry,” he said, as if that explained everything.

They ate in silence. Natasha and her rumbling stomach were grateful for the food, and Anatole seemed too preoccupied with breakfast to try sneaking a word in edgewise, which she was even more grateful for.

She didn’t get to enjoy it for long. Natasha had only just scarfed down a few slices of bread when the door swung open again and slammed into the wall so loudly that the both of them jumped and Anatole almost choked on his mouthful.

Hélène leaned against the doorframe and raised her eyebrows. “What’s all this?”

Natasha reached over and slapped Anatole on the back when he gave no indication of having cleared his airways. He coughed into the blanket, and then shot Hélène an irate look. “Breakfast.”

Hélène sighed as she took in their spread. “Volkov was looking for all of this this morning.”

“What?”

“The food. And the cutlery too.”

Anatole blinked. He turned his head to Natasha, then the door, then back to Hélène. “Well, he didn’t look in here.”

She lightly cuffed him upside the head. Anatole laughed. “Greedy. C’mon. Time to get up and make yourself useful.”

“What do you need?”

“We’re going on a job,” Hélène said. “Can you hold down the fort while we’re gone? We’ll get someone else to watch her.”

“Won’t be very long,” Fedya said. Natasha hadn’t even noticed him standing in the doorway behind Hélène.

Anatole wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Can’t Denisov do it? I’m busy.”

 _With what?_ thought Natasha.

“With what?” Fedya said, not even a second after she had thought it.

“This is important, Anatole,” Hélène snapped.

“That’s what you say about everything.”

She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Well, maybe you should start listening for a change.”

“It’ll be fine, Lena,” Fedya said calmly. “We’re only gonna be out for an hour. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Don’t say that. Don’t you even tempt—”

“Look, we’ve already used up all our bad luck for the week on this one”—he gestured to Natasha—“so I think it’s safe to say that nothing will happen. Look, if you’re that worried about it, you could always take Volkov with you.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Good, so we’re in agreement.” Fedya grinned, taking Hélène’s hand. “Let’s go, Mrs. Dolokhova.”

“In your dreams, loverboy.”

“Wait,” Natasha said, “you two aren’t actually married?”

Hélène and Fedya exchanged an incredulous look, before bursting into laughter.

“You know,” Hélène said, looking at the ring on her finger, “I’d almost forgotten about this old thing.”

“Doesn’t fit her,” Anatole said to Natasha, out of the corner of his mouth as he folded the last slice of bread in half. “Mom had thinner fingers than she does.”

Hélène shot him an irate look. Natasha wondered whether or not she was going to slap him again. She got her answer when Hélène elbowed him in the side instead, and he ducked out of the way of her arm, laughing.

“You should get yours too,” Hélène said to Fedya.

He dug into his trouser pocket and pulled out a small black pouch. Velvet. Or something equally nice and expensive. Easily the nicest-looking thing in the house. He fished out a gold ring and slid it on his finger.

“So are we all good here?” Anatole said blithely. “Can I be left to digest my breakfast in peace?”

“It won’t kill you to take this seriously.”

“It might. Indigestion’s a real killer, you know.”

Fedya pinched the bridge of his nose. “For fuck’s sake, kid.”

Hélène sighed. “Maybe I should let the others do it and stay here instead.”

“Well, where am I going?” Natasha snapped.

She didn’t like Anatole. She didn’t necessarily hate him, per se—he didn’t seem quite together enough to justify that—but she distrusted him significantly less than the others. The thought of being left with strangers felt more frightening in comparison. If it was a choice between two evils, he was by far the least intimidating and hopefully the more easily intimidated.

Hélène ignored her and turned back to Fedya. “What do you think?”

“That Volkov wouldn’t know a good omelette if it bit him in the ass.”

“Helpful.”

“You know,” said Anatole, “if you leave me here, I can just keep an eye on her.”

 _Yes,_ Natasha thought. _Dear lord, yes please. That’s the first good idea that’s ever come out of his mouth. If you don’t listen to him, he’ll get discouraged and never have one again._

Hélène frowned. “That leaves Yuri or Volkov in charge. Denisov is out running errands.”

She didn’t recognize any of those names. Which, by extension, meant that she didn’t like the sound of them.

“So leave one of them in charge,” he said.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Let’s hurry this up, kids,” said Fedya. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

“Shit,” Hélène muttered suddenly, worrying a nail between her teeth. “We don’t have a driver.” She turned to Fedya. “Can you do it this time?”

“What, you’re afraid you’ll scuff your pumps on the pedals or something?”

Hélène swatted his arm. “Someone has to keep the engine running.” She turned to Natasha and Anatole. “That means you two’ll have to be the bait.”

The bait. Natasha didn’t like the sound of that. Not one bit.

“What exactly does that entail?” she ventured, when the others seemed to accept what that meant without question.

“Oh look, Fed,” Hélène cooed. “She even has a ring already.” She turned back to Natasha. “You’re making my life so much easier.”

Seeing as, thus far, anything that made Hélène’s life easier seemed to make Natasha’s exponentially more difficult, she was liking the sound of this less and less with every passing second. “I beg your pardon.”

“You heard me, doll. You’ll make a nice, wholesome-looking couple.” She pushed them together at the shoulders, smiling. “How precious. Look at these two, Fed. Don’t you think they’d be adorable newlyweds?”

Fedya gave that a noncommittal grunt.

“I can do it alone,” Anatole said. “I know the drill.”

Hélène ignored him and turned back to Fedya. “The suit won’t work for what I’m thinking. Can you lend him something?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a few shirts. Nothing fancy or fitted enough for his liking, but it’ll do.”

“He doesn’t have to like it, he just has to look convincing,” said Hélène, as if Anatole were in another room and not a foot away.

“What I’m wearing is fine,” Anatole grumbled.

“And she looks too grubby,” Fedya said, ignoring Natasha’s indignant glare. “We don’t want people thinking they’re a pair of okies or anything.”

Had she had an ounce less of self-preservation, Natasha would have slapped him immediately.

Hélène sighed. “I might have something.”

“What are we _doing_?” said Natasha.

Hélène smiled and shook her head. “All in due time, my dear. Now, what size dress do you wear?”

* * *

 

The plan, as explained by Hélène to Natasha, went something like this:

Natasha and Anatole would go into the store and play husband and wife. They would shop, giving Hélène time to check for any exits and block them off if necessary. When they were cashing out, Hélène would pull a gun on them until the cashier gave them money from the register. At which point, Hélène would ‘abduct’ them, herding them into the car where Fedya would be waiting to speed them away.

The whole thing sounded reasonably cunning, until you gave it more than a single second of thought, at which point it became obvious that this was a profoundly moronic idea of epic proportions that was bound to end in nothing but absolute disaster.

“Simple, isn’t it?” Hélène had said with a grin.

To which Natasha had had to stifle a little squeak of dread as her heart plummeted to her heels.

They were idiots, the lot of them. Dangerous, stupid, and dangerously stupid idiots. A few peanuts short of a three-ring circus.

“This _works_?” she said.

“The trick, Tasha,” Anatole said, as if explaining an elaborate card trick, “is that you have to go the whole damn hog. You don’t stop halfway.”

It was too late to stop anyhow, if that was what he was suggesting. By now, they were in the car, chuntering down the road like daytrippers. Hélène had since had Natasha change into an old dress of hers—something frumpy and unfortunate-looking, but less tattered and grungy than Natasha’s own clothes were by now, even if it made her feel like a relic of the past century.

“Besides,” Hélène added from the front seat, doing _something_ with her pistol that made vaguely threatening sounds and filled their noses with the smell of gunpowder, “we always come prepared for something to go wrong.”

Natasha stared on in horror. Oh. She hadn’t realized this would have involved a gun. Coldness gripped her heart.

“I know,” Anatole said drily. He looked down at his new outfit, an old, worn shirt that would have been more suited to a man twenty years his senior and a pair of trousers that hung too high above his ankles. “Fedya’s taste is absolutely appalling. Polyester. You’d think the man had been raised in a barn. No money for good clothes, these days. Don’t worry. We can change once we’re finished.”

“I think she looks sweet,” said Hélène. “Very wide-eyed. Perfect for today.”

Natasha’s jaw swung open.

“Don’t scare the girl, Lena,” Fedya said. “She’s already too jittery. They’re gonna know something’s up as soon as they so much as look at her.”

“Nah, they won’t. She’s shy. It’ll play into the character.”

“Oh, so we’re playing ‘characters’ now?” said Anatole.

“It’s translating to ‘mute’, not ‘shy’,” Fedya grumbled.

Anatole frowned and gently nudged her shoulder with his. “What’s got you so hot and bothered, Tasha?”

Natasha didn’t say a word, only nodded her head in the direction of Hélène’s pistol.

Anatole’s frown deepened. “Oh, that silly old thing? It’s nothing you need to think about.”

“No gun for you this time, angel,” Hélène clucked, sliding the pistol into her purse. “Tolya, do you need one?”

Anatole wrinkled his nose. “You know I don’t like guns.”  

Natasha smiled a little, despite herself. Of course he wouldn’t like guns. Two-faced liar, thief, scoundrel, and braggart or not, at least there still was somebody reasonably sane and nonviolent here.

But then something flew into his hand in a blur of silver, so quickly that she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where it had come from. A pocket knife. “I’m fine with this.”

Natasha’s shoulders and hopes drooped a little at that. She realized, for a brief, horrified moment, that this was the same man she had tried to overpower with a hatpin not even two days ago. Armed with a knife this whole time, and she had never even known.

Hélène frowned. “That’s next to useless in a shootout.”

“Not my fault dear old Dad wanted you to have the gun. Besides, you don’t need me to pull one on anyone, do you? Not when you’re so close.”

“Fine,” Hélène sighed. “Just keep me in your sightlines, just in case.”

Fedya raised an eyebrow. “You’re going too?”

“Of course. I’ll pull the gun. No one will see it coming.”

“Of course,” echoed Anatole.

“I can’t,” Natasha said. Terror rose in her throat. “Please, don’t make me.”

Anatole furrowed his brow in concern. Hélène, on the other hand, didn’t look concerned at all. “I’m not asking you to hold the gun, sweetheart. All you gotta do is stand there and bat your pretty little eyelashes and make small talk. Easy as pie. Capisce?”

Natasha felt her palms start to sweat, and her breaths came shorter and faster. “This is wrong. I can’t. I won’t.”

Hélène ignored her. “Now let me see you two together.”

Anatole glared at her before adopting a pleasant smile and wrapping his arm around Natasha’s waist. Natasha’s face crumpled.

“Jesus, sweetheart,” Hélène said, smiling through gritted teeth. “He doesn’t bite. Don’t look so cold. Or you two are gonna seem like the least affectionate married couple this side of the Atlantic.”

Anatole reached for her hand and squeezed softly. “Okay?” he whispered.

Natasha flinched. “I really—”

Hélène shot her a stern look, and her protest withered and died on her tongue.

“Regular codeword,” she said to Anatole. “Wait until you’re checking out. Make a scene or something and I’ll be waiting right there.”

“Got it,” he said.

“I’ll be watching,” Hélène said pointedly. “Don’t mess this up.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n.”

“When you get in, keep your eyes up and listen to Anatole,” Hélène said sternly, turning to Natasha. “Don’t try anything. Got it?”

Natasha gulped and nodded.

“I’ll be watching,” she said again, “and Fedya will be by the door. There’s nowhere to run.”

“We could just leave her there,” Fedya muttered. “Would be easier.”

“Tolya’s not seven years old and cute anymore. People won’t buy it if it’s a woman holding the gun to a man. Couples are more palatable.”

“Then let Tolya drive and I’ll come in with you.”

“I don’t trust him not to crash the car at the first streetlight.”

“Hey!” Anatole said indignantly.

“Besides, it isn’t as if he’s doing anything difficult. Stick to the plan, and it’ll be easy. Right? Of course, right.”

* * *

 

The grocery store was a ramshackle little building in the outskirts of some equally ramshackle little town, and every time the wind blew past, it kicked up clouds of dust and weeds. Natasha’s heart sank just looking at it. What on earth, she thought, could such a dingy place have to offer that was so valuable they found the need to resort to armed robbery?

The car pulled up along the side of the road. Fedya kept the engine running as Hélène stepped out.

“I’ll go in first,” she said. “Give me five minutes to scope it out, and then you two walk in together.”

“Got it.”

“Fedya, hang around the corner. Circle the block before you let them out, then keep your eyes on the door. We should be in and out in fifteen.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“The sheriff’s station is on the other side of town,” she continued. “Due east. There’ll be no problems so long as we’re quick about it.”

Natasha’s head, which had shot up at the word _sheriff_ , dropped back to her chest. Was there still hope that Andrei may have been looking for her? Surely her disappearance would have made news by now. And if her face was seen, around these people no less, how quickly would word travel?

Her mind spiralled off, as it was wont to do, into its dreamland of stories and speculation again. They hadn’t gone that far from town, not if the distance they had travelled was anything to go by. Perhaps there would be a friendly face in that store. Someone she recognized, or someone who at least vaguely recognized her. A whispered message, or a frantically-scrawled note. It would be a lead, and that was more than nothing.

Or, she thought, there would be a clerk there. A clerk she could ask for help. Perhaps she could lose them in the store, small as it was, hide between the racks or in the back room, and—

Natasha’s imagination paused for a moment, and her heart with it. Well, there wasn’t exactly much she could do from there. Not if they panicked and decided to look for her.

Fedya stopped the car in a back alley and swivelled around to face Anatole. “Your turn, kid.”

“I do believe that’s our cue,” Anatole said affably. “Here goes nothing.”

He ushered Natasha out of the car before she could protest.

“Just remember, you’re not doing anything wrong,” Anatole said under his breath as they walked into the store. “We’re just a young couple trying to get some groceries. You’ve done that before, right? With your husband?”

Natasha nodded blankly. She could have slapped him for even mentioning Andrei. There was nothing comparable between _that_ and _this_.

“There you go. So, you already know how easy it is. There’s nothing to worry about. Lena’s doing all the hard work, anyway.”

Natasha had nothing to say to that, and Anatole sighed.

The store was even dingier on the inside than it had looked from the road, but the shelves were full of produce and cans, and it was enough to make her remember that she hadn’t eaten a proper meal since before she had been kidnapped. God, when had she last gone grocery shopping? When had she last had a taste of normalcy?

If she closed her eyes, perhaps she could pretend she was just out on an errand with Andrei, and back home, and safe.

“What do you think we should pick up?” said Anatole, and the illusion shattered at the sound of his voice.

Natasha turned to him, caught off guard. “What?”

He shrugged. “We’re in a grocery store. If you see something you’d like, we can grab it. We need something to take to the checkout anyways.”

No. This was wrong. She wasn’t going to participate in it any more than she already had to. “I don’t want anything.”

Anatole picked up a can of preserves and considered it thoughtfully. “You sure? Trust me, living offa beans and eggs gets old fast.”

“I’m sure.”

“You know what,” he said, “I’ll get this for myself, and if you change your mind later, we’ll just share. How’s that sound?”

“‘Later’? How much longer am I going to have to do this?”

“I meant later tonight,” Anatole said patiently. “We’ll get you home as soon as we can.”

“I could scream for help,” she hissed.

“You could,” Anatole said. “But I’m not doing anything illegal right now. Nor is Hélène. Nor is Fedya. I’ll just say you’re overwrought and deny everything. Who do you think they’re gonna believe? The hysterical lady, or me?”

Natasha dug her nails into his wrist, hoping that it hurt. It must have, if the look on his face was anything to go by. It was only fair. If he was going to insist on holding her hand, then she only had the right to make it a little more tolerable for herself by making it less tolerable for him.

“Don’t worry,” Anatole said. “We’ll get you home. But you need to be patient. And you need to stop cutting off my circulation. I’m quite fond of that hand. I’d like to keep it.”

“You should have left me back there. I won’t do this.”

“This isn’t a big deal. You just need to get out of your head. You aren’t even doing anything wrong. That’s all Hélène.”

Natasha kept her eyes forwards. She felt him give her hand a light squeeze and run his thumb over the ridge of her knuckles.

“Are you alright? Do you wanna duck into the next aisle and talk?”

Natasha’s eyes snapped to his face. Was this some kind of trap?

“I’m serious,” he said. His eyes softened. “I’m not Lena, alright? You don’t have to be so jumpy. I’m not gonna bite your head off if you want a quick breather. Nobody’s listening to us, anyway.”

Natasha bit her lip and nodded.

Anatole steered her into another aisle, behind a box of pears. The second they were out of Hélène’s line of sight, he dropped her hand. “Do you wanna sit?”

“Please,” she whispered.

“Okay,” he murmured. “Let’s do that.”

There wasn’t a chair or a bench nearby, so he cleared a patch of floor for her, and she immediately sank onto her bottom and leaned back against the counter with a ragged sigh. Anatole knelt beside her.

“Is everything alright?” he said gently.

Natasha nearly laughed. What sort of a question was that? Was he really that thick or just in-character?

“You’re forcing me to rob a store,” she said sharply. “No, everything is _not_ alright.”

Anatole snorted. It was so undignified and unexpected that she almost startled. “Besides that.”

“I feel like a bad person. I don’t…I don’t want to hurt these people.”

“We aren’t going to hurt them,” he said. “Lena’s going to show up, wave her gun around, and that’ll be it. Promise.”

She sighed. “They’re still going to be scared, aren’t they?”

“A little. But they’ll be fine. We’re not gonna hurt anyone.”

“Mistakes happen,” she said softly. “They did with me. Didn’t they?”

Anatole paused. His eyes flickered over to the rack. “What would calm you down? Do you want a peach? Would that make things any better?”

Natasha shook her head.

“They’re tasty. In-season, too.”

“How do you _do_ this?” she asked.

“Honestly, I don’t go on jobs that often. I know what I’m doing and everything. I just hate how annoying Lena gets.”

She giggled, despite herself. “Really?”

“She’s an absolute nightmare on jobs,” he said. “She gets so _bossy_. A complete control freak. You don’t know the half of it.”

“Trust me, I understand.”

“There’s no need to be so serious,” Anatole muttered. “For Christ’s sake, we’re at a local grocery store, not the treasury. We might as well have some fun.”

Natasha stared at him. “‘Fun’?”

“Why not? Anything to make the time go by. When I was little, I used to try to find things in stores. These jobs can get real slow.”

“You’ve done this a lot?”

“Ever since I could toddle. Our old man mostly did stores like this after we were born.”

“He took you with him?”

He looked flabbergasted at that, like she had just suggested the moon was made of cheese. “Well, where else would we have gone? We didn’t have a say in it. We were kids.”

“That isn’t right,” Natasha said softly.

His smile was distant, a little sad, a little nostalgic, and utterly indecipherable. “Nah, it was fine. Honest. It was kind of fun, actually. We were only little, so Papa had to make it into a game to keep our attention. And he made sure we never got hurt. No need to look so scandalized, love. We’re criminals, not maniacs.”

 _Is there a difference?_ she almost said.

“I did my first job when I was five years old,” he continued, “which is how I know you’re gonna be fine. Because according to Lena, I am, quote, ‘the single most forgetful and idiotic person she’s ever met’, and she’s met Pierre Bezukhov, so that’s really saying something.”

Natasha sighed.

“We’ve all got our tips and tricks to keep ourselves calm. That’s all you need.”

“I have a little game I like to play,” she said in a breathless rush. “When I’m bored. Or nervous.”

Anatole raised his eyebrows. More amused than confused. “A game?”

Natasha paused. Why was she telling him this? What was the point to it? Was there any point at all?

No, there wasn’t, she decided. But on the other hand, did that really matter, given the circumstances?

She found herself continuing without even knowing why. “With the people I meet. Well, the ones I don’t get to know, at least. I make up backstories for them, like a detective. All in my head. It’s like a movie.”

Anatole chuckled and nodded towards the old woman the aisle over, sorting through a pile of withered-looking apples. “What’s her story?”

A hot flush rose to her cheeks. “She was an actress when she was younger, way out in Chicago. One of those line dancers, you know? But she was hit by a locomotive on her way to the theater and broke her leg—fractured it in three places at the shin—and she had to quit, because by the time it’d healed, the company had replaced her, so she moved out here with her ageing uncle and got a job at the post office sorting through the un-stamped envelopes.”

Anatole’s lips parted in amusement. “Did you just rattle that off off the top of your head?”

Natasha ducked her head. “Yeah. Silly, isn’t it?”

“I think it’s fun. You know, this can be fun too, if you’d just relax. Play along with it.”

“‘Play along’?”

“Like one of your make-believe stories. Yeah, that’s it! We’re just strangers making up our own stories as we go. You can come up with our backstories, our names, anything. We’re new people. We’re characters in a story, and you get to make it up as you go along, no matter how ridiculous it is. Fun, right?”

Now that he put it like that, the whole idea didn’t seem nearly as terrible or strange as it had before. Natasha frowned pensively, but she didn’t object.

“Follow my lead,” he said, “and we’ll be just fine. We’re just a normal couple who’s going to go to the checkout. Easy.”

She nodded, rose to her feet again, and slipped her arm through his.

Anatole picked freely from the shelves with all the curiosity and wandering eyes of a child let loose in a candy store. Cans of beans; tins of tuna; jars of marmalade and butter and preserves; bacon; several bottles of whiskey; loaves of bread; blocks of cheese. And, of course, even though Natasha wrinkled her nose and almost gagged at the sight of them, a generous pile of cigarette boxes.

“For the others,” he said, slipping them into the basket. “My lungs are a tad too delicate for those things.”

He was too comfortable with this. Too used to it. Well, she supposed, if you’d been doing anything since you were little, you would get used to it.

If she let her mind wander again, she could envision a whole backstory for him, partly contrived, but it felt authentic enough that she knew it must have been at least partly true as well. The father didn’t sound like the nicest man, from what she had heard of him. And he had referred to a mother, so there had been one in the picture, but in the past tense, so she was probably dead. After all, she thought, only a dead mother would have allowed her children to be involved in this life. And only a cruel, cunning father would have had his children involved in it in the first place.

What sort of a childhood must that have been? How could a person live like that?

Anatole wasn’t as hardened and angry as his sister, that much was evident. There was still a childlike innocence in him, even if only in his idiocy, something that life—and his father—hadn’t been able to stamp out. Was Hélène’s cruelty, she wondered, the price of his naïveté? Had she been the protector and the confidante? Had she borne the brunt of whatever these two had been through in their lives?

A white-hot pang of sympathy shot through her, despite herself, and she involuntarily squeezed Anatole’s arm like she would have done to Andrei. Anatole faltered for a second in surprise, but quickly regained his composure, and steered her towards the cashier.

“Oh, you two are the sweetest couple,” the woman behind them in line said. “Are you married?”

Natasha was eerily reminded of that day in the bank. She almost shuddered.

Anatole wrapped his arm around Natasha’s waist with easy confidence. “Yes, we are. Almost a year, now.”

“You’re a lucky one,” the woman said to Natasha. She turned back to Anatole with a smug little grin. “If I’d known that there were men like him out there a year ago, I would’ve looked harder.”

Ah. So, she could play the jealous wife. It was a part she wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with.

Natasha’s smile dropped, but Anatole remained oblivious—or, at least, consciously oblivious—and smiled good-naturedly. “You’re too kind, ma’am.”

“ _Miss_ ,” the woman said.

“My apologies,” he said smoothly.

The woman laughed and laid a hand on Anatole’s forearm. An innocent enough gesture, unless you took into account the context, or the not-so-innocent smile she shot his way.

Natasha pulled on his sleeve, yanking him back towards her. “Why are you smiling at her?” she snapped.

Anatole’s head turned in what seemed like genuine surprise. That, or he was a more dedicated actor than she had thought. “Huh?”

“Your eyes have been wandering since we got here. I want to know why.”

He pulled away from her, and she squared her chest, placing her hands on her hips. The urge to laugh was almost irresistible. “Sweetheart, I was trying to make friendly conversation, that’s all.” He turned back to the woman and shot her a broad grin.

“You stay away from him,” Natasha snapped at the woman. “He’s taken. We have a _baby_ , for Christ’s sake.”

Anatole blinked in alarm, but he quickly fell back into his part. “You’ll have to forgive my wife. She’s been a little frayed since the baby arrived.”

“Don’t!” Natasha cried. “You always do this.”

“Darling,” Anatole murmured, enfolding Natasha in his arms, “please. You’re making a scene.”

She was, probably. Several eyes from the other aisles had begun to drift towards them at the loudness of her voice. It was liberating, in a way, being able to shout as she pleased, and more specifically, being able to shout at him.

“I don’t care anymore! I try and try and you barely seem to notice me! All you care about it work, and I’m sick of it.”

“I’m sorry,” Anatole said coldly, “that I care enough about our family to go out and earn a living. God forbid I have something in my life that isn’t about _you_.”

“Oh, this schtick again.”

“I come home from a long day of work exhausted. I don’t need you pawing at me while I’m trying to rest my goddamn feet.”

“I have a baby to take care of,” she shot back. “You’re not the only one who has a busy day, you self-righteous jackass.”

“Ah yes,” he said. “Because staying at home all day is just as hard as going out on the boat.”

Natasha shot him a bemused look. Anatole—pretty, polished Anatole, who insisted on wearing a nice three-piece suit even on the lam—hardly had the ruggedness to pull off being a sailor, and the nearest body of water was probably a day’s journey by train at minimum. He must have realized this just a moment after she had, because his face dropped for a fraction of a second, as if begging her to cover for him.

She was more than happy to oblige.

“You’re too tired to come to bed at night, but you still manage to visit every _slut_ in town before dinner! When’s the last time you gave me a goodnight kiss? When’s the last time I didn’t have to chase after you to get you to pay any attention to me?”

“Who could blame me?” he shouted, so loud half the store must have been listening by now. Good. They had their audience. “All you give a shit about anymore is the kid!”

Without thinking, but not without a thrill of excitement, Natasha reached over and slapped him across the face. It wasn’t hard, and it wasn’t loud either, but he gasped for effect and let his head snap to the side.

“God _dammit_ , Aline!” he spat, one hand on his cheek.

Natasha felt someone grab her by the forearm, and whipped around to meet Hélène’s eyes.

She did not look happy.

“Who the hell are you?” Anatole said. He turned back to Natasha. “Now look what you’ve done. You’ve gone and made a complete—”

“Me?” she snarled in mock-offense. “I’m not the one who started flirting with a complete stranger.”

“I wasn’t flirting, I was being polite, you jealous—”

“Enough,” Hélène snapped. She pulled her gun out of her purse and pointed it at the cashier. “This is a robbery.”

Dead silence. Every person in the store, Natasha and Anatole included, froze at once.

“Very good,” she said. “Now, open the register.”

A man lunged towards her without warning. Hélène shot him a cold smile and levelled her gun against Natasha’s temple. “Nobody move.”

Natasha’s muscles locked in place. The air left her lungs in one breath. Hélène must have noticed that her terror was genuine, because she turned her attention back to Anatole, yanking his head back by the hair and pressing the gun to his jaw.

“The cash,” she said to the cashier. “Now.”

Anatole inhaled sharply. He was only acting. He must have been, and she was full well aware of that, but the blood stilled in her veins all the same.  

Hélène nodded to Natasha. “Be a dear and fetch it, would you?”

Natasha nodded mechanically and stumbled forwards. Anatole continued to struggle against Hélène’s hold. Acting. He was only acting. But he looked so genuinely frightened and she so genuinely angry that the sight of it sent her heart hammering in panic and made her fear for both his life and her own.

The cashier gave Natasha a stack of bills, squeezing her hand as she pulled away. The shopper who had flirted with Anatole earlier looked on with a mix of horror and guilt.

Hélène shot Natasha an impatient look. It was then that Natasha remembered she was expected to follow them out of the store.

She still had the money in her hands. They couldn’t leave her behind. They wouldn’t. Not while she had the money. She was trapped again, and the worst thing was that they would make her follow them of her own volition this time.

“No, please, just leave me here,” Natasha said. She held out the cash as far as her arms would stretch. “You can take him with you if you want. Let me stay behind. Please, I don’t want—”

Hélène pointed the gun at Natasha, still holding Anatole’s arm, and jerked her wrist impatiently towards the door. “Chop chop, sweetheart.”

Natasha wrapped her arms around herself and slowly walked up to them.

“Good girl,” Hélène said coolly. To the cashier and the other shoppers watching in silent disbelief, she said, “We’ll be on our way now. Ta-ta.”

And with that, they bustled out the front door. Hélène kept a hold on Anatole’s forearm, but pressed the gun against the small of Natasha’s back, hurrying her forwards, and a moment later, the car came screeching along the roadside like a rocket set loose on a prairie.

They boarded as quickly as they could, Hélène in shotgun, Natasha and Anatole in the back. Anatole held the shopping basket in his lap. The money was still in Natasha’s hands. Her fingers refused to relax. Her knees were still shaking.

Fedya revved the engine, and they took off down the road in a burst of dust.

“That was quick,” he said.

“I know. I was pleasantly surprised these two didn’t dawdle forever.”

“Record timing, I’d wager.”

“Well done,” Hélène said, grinning at Anatole. “Keep that up and I might just drag you on more of these jobs.”

He wrinkled his nose and stretched his arms over his head. “No, thank you. That was enough excitement for me.”

“Well, then, you’d better stay on your best behavior, or I might find more excuses to have you join us.”

“How rude.”

Fedya laughed and leaned over to kiss Hélène on the mouth. She chuckled and kissed him back, before swatting his chest with a playful, “Eyes on the road, mister.”

Fedya grinned and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He kept his left hand on the wheel. “So, no problems?”

“Nope,” she said, popping the ‘p’. “Our new friend did well. Everything went off without a hitch.”

“Quite the actress,” said Anatole. “I expect we’ll be seeing her name in marquee lights, once she gets back home.”

None of them seemed to notice that Natasha was, in fact, steaming with fury.  

“Didja get some smokes?” Fedya said.

Anatole rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

“Thank God,” Hélène said. “Pass me one.”

Anatole did so, only after huffing and mumbling something about ‘bad lungs’ under his breath.

“Want one too, Tasha?”

“No, I don’t,” she snapped. “I don’t want anything any of you can offer me.”

Hélène raised an eyebrow. “Everything alright, honey?”

“How dare you,” she spat, surprised at her own ferocity. “You could have killed us. I don’t give a damn if it was acting or not. You threatened us with a goddamn _gun_ , and somehow you’ve managed to make him think there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Anatole and Fedya exchanged a look that could have either been surprise or amusement. It was impossible to tell. Hélène remained downright unreadable.

“If your finger had slipped, he would’ve been dead, and we’d be cleaning his blood and brains off the windows and floors of that store.”

“The gun wasn’t loaded,” she said coolly.

Natasha blinked, confused. “What?”

Hélène rolled her eyes. “Did you seriously think I’m deranged enough to put a loaded gun to my brother’s head? I don’t expect you to like me, sweetheart, and that’s perfectly fine. Hate me, if you want.” She lowered her voice to a more dangerous pitch. “But don’t you dare for a second assume that I’d put his life in danger.”

“It sure looked like it, back there,” Natasha shot back.

“And it sure looked like you weren’t married to someone else,” Hélène said coldly.

Fedya let out a low whistle. Anatole’s eyes went wide.

“Didn’t take you long to find a replacement for your hubby, now, did it?” she continued. “It was impressive, actually—I’ve never seen you get so angry before. Tell me, sweetheart, did you have to fend off flirty hussies with your first man, too?”

“You forced me too!” Natasha gasped. “I didn’t want a part in this.”

“Please,” Hélène scoffed. “You _loved_ it. I could see it written clear as day on your face.” Her lips curled into a sneer. “In the way you look at him.”

Anatole shifted awkwardly in his seat. “Is this really necessary?”

“It was exciting, wasn’t it? Do you see now? It’s fun, screaming and shouting. It’s nice to be angry. It’s good to let off steam. There’s other things in life besides being a housewife. Besides sitting at home and mending and cooking for a husband you pretend to care about.”

“Jesus, Lena,” said Anatole, wincing. “I think maybe you two should—”

“Shut up,” Hélène and Natasha chorused in unison.

Fedya glared. Anatole looked more taken aback than angry. He shrank into the backseat without another word and a childish pout.

Natasha gestured to Fedya. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t have put a gun to _his_ head.”

Even Fedya looked shocked by that. Anatole’s mouth swung open, and he shot a nervous look towards Hélène, whose face had grown cold and cruel. Natasha shrank back at the sight of it.

“You assume a lot,” Hélène said. “A lot. My patience is finite, sweetheart.”

“Well, so is mine,” she shot back. “Now, after all this _bullshit_ you’ve put me through, I think the least you owe me is an apology.”

Anatole, who looked the most uncomfortable out of the lot of them, sighed and put his face in his hands. “Can’t we all just get along? Is that so much to ask?”

“Hold your tongue, you.”

“Yes, ma’am, sorry,” he murmured, and wilted back into his seat without another word.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Natasha snarled.

Fedya’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Anatole.

Oh, she had done it now. Dug her own grave and tossed the shovel aside. Natasha mentally prepared herself for the worst. She thought of the road speeding by beneath them, and wondered how badly it would hurt to leap out the window and tumble to the ground, even now, even while the car was still speeding and God-knew-how-many miles an hour. Surely not that bad. Surely not as badly as being pistol-whipped, or shot, or whatever the hell it was Hélène was going to do to her once she decided to exact punishment.

But none of those things happened. To everyone’s apparent surprise, Hélène only threw back her head and laughed. A heavy belly-laugh, one that came all the way from her diaphragm, one that shook her shoulders and made her list back and forth in her seat.

Natasha stared at her in confusion. Relief didn’t set in until a few moments later.  

“Oh, this is just adorable. She’s a little spitfire, isn’t she, Fed?”

Fedya, who seemed to have recovered from his shock with unexpected speed, snickered with her. “She needs something to compensate for the lack of any common sense.”

Natasha had lost her voice. She opened her mouth, hoping that some reasonably-witty retort would come out.

Anatole reached across the seat, took her hand, and shook his head silently. For once, she was grateful for it.

“You’ve got moxie, sweetheart,” said Hélène. “I like that. We can put that to good use.”

“Hélène,” Anatole began, but she cut him off with a sharp look.

“So long,” she continued, “as you remember your place here.”

Natasha tilted her chin up defiantly. Whatever had come over her in the store, it was thrumming through her veins again, hot and demanding. Half of her wanted to put her arms around her knees and cry and block out the rest of the world, and forget everything that had happened to her. She felt it calling her home, felt something deep in her chest ache at the very thought of what she was missing, and she wondered how in so little time, she could have become so lost and confused.

The other half wanted to pursue this new feeling. This exhilaration, the heady rush of adrenaline that was still making her hands shake and her heart race in her throat. There was something new and dangerous stirring in her blood and, for the first time, Natasha didn’t entirely want to ignore it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (if you catch the fiddler on the roof reference, drop a comment calling @thewhiskerydragon out)


	7. The Interim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha meets a friendly face and attempts a new scheme.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! If you liked this, check out our other works, and be sure to let us know your thoughts!

There was a man waiting for them on the front porch when they arrived back at the house.

“Ivan, come help put all of this away,” Hélène called.

“You got food?” he said.

“Some,” she said. “Not much.”

The man—Ivan, Natasha supposed—was taller even than Anatole and just as pale, but his features were sharper and more narrow-set. He had fine, straight brown hair and watery blue eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was as twitchy and nervous as his hands were. “Grocery store?” he said. “Or bank?”

“Grocery store. Fetch Yuri and Volkov, would you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And with that, he scurried off into the front door like a mouse. It wasn’t long before he appeared again with another man in tow, this one tall as well but more heavily-muscled, with a shock of light, curly hair and strangely bright eyes, almost like those of a cat. He carried himself with an easy grace, reminiscent of Anatole but sharper and more deliberate.

“What’ve you been up to, Lenochka?” the new stranger said.

“I’ve told you, it’s ‘Hélène’, Yuri,” she snapped. “Don’t get familiar.”

Yuri’s eyebrows shot up and he raised his hands in mock-surrender. “Apologies, princess.”

“Where’s Volkov?” Fedya cut in quickly, before Hélène could respond. “He should be here as well.”

Yuri shrugged and leaned back against the wall. “He said he was occupied.”

“He doesn’t get to be occupied. There’s nothing to fucking occupy yourself with in this house,” said Hélène.

Fedya sighed and considered the car. “Can you and Ivan carry this in by yourselves?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Yuri.

“Come on,” Anatole muttered to Natasha, and tugged her out of the car, leaving the wad of cash and the shopping basket on the backseat.

“But the stuff—”

“Leave it. We should get you inside.”

As they shuffled past the front steps and into the foyer, Yuri turned his head caught her eye, and for a moment, they stared at each other. Natasha immediately knew that she had looked for too long. Even as she turned her head away, her skin prickled uneasily, as if his eyes were still on her. If she had disliked Hélène and Fedya, then the sense she felt towards Yuri must have been something closer to absolute revulsion.

“Who’s this?” he said.

“None of your concern,” said Anatole, with more anger than she was used to hearing from him. Against all common sense, it was tempting to duck behind him and let him do the talking for her.

Yuri’s eyebrows inched up a little further. “Would you look at that. Tolenka’s grown a spine.”

“As interesting as this dalliance is,” Hélène cut in, “would you come and help us with the supplies?”

“Didn’t know you went on a job.”

She frowned. “Volkov didn’t tell you?”

“He must have forgotten,” Yuri said in a clipped, monotone voice. “Doesn’t matter.”

“You’re right,” Ivan said. “We have food now. That matters more.”

“First time in a while,” Yuri muttered.

“We have food and we have cash,” Hélène said sharply. “I don’t want to hear any complaints.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Yuri drawled.

Ivan nodded with much more sincerity.

“You two are coming to the car with me to help me unload.” Hélène kissed Fedya’s cheek. “Join me when you’re done, alright? I’m gonna see how much we got.”

“‘Course.”

Hélène sauntered down the hallway with Ivan and Yuri following at her heels.

“Alright,” Fedya said, turning to Natasha, “Time to go back to your room.”

Natasha sputtered incredulously. “You can’t be serious. I just helped you rob a store. You can’t just stuff me back in there again.”

Fedya took her arm and steered her towards the room. “You’re still a hostage.”

She tried digging her heels into the ground, but there was no purchase in the floorboards and Fedya was too strong, and before she knew it, she was sliding down the hallway with him half-dragging her behind him.

“Oh, Fedya, don’t be so mean,” Anatole chided.

He didn’t, Natasha noticed with a pang of resentment, make a point of following them.

“You still have my dress!” Natasha shrieked. “Hélène, give me my things back!”

Finally they came upon that familiar doorway at the end of the corridor.

“Here we go,” said Fedya. With the hand not clenched around her bicep, he turned the knob and kicked the door open in a bang of dust and a clamor of squeaking hinges.

The room wasn’t empty.

On the bed sat a black-haired man, short, snub-nosed and pleasant-looking, though she knew by now not to allow that to impair her judgement. A block of wood lay in his lap, and he was studiously paring at it with a small knife. A small pile of sawdust and hemmed-away curlicues of wood and splinters had gathered at his feet.

“New guest,” Fedya grunted, shoving Natasha forwards.

The man’s head snapped upright. “Is this the girl Lena was talking about?”

“One and the same. Introduce yourself. Or don’t. Doesn’t matter either way.”

“Honestly, Fyodor,” the man said sternly. “Were you raised in a barn?”

“Oklahoma. Same thing, really,” he said, and slammed the door shut behind him.

The man sighed and shook his head. “I apologize for him.” He set his project aside and stood up, brushing wood shavings off his legs. “Vaska Denisov. I don’t imagine you’re here of your own volition. I apologize for that as well.”

“I’m not,” Natasha said flatly. “Obviously.”

Denisov sighed and gestured to the mattress. “I’d apologize a third time, but that might be redundant at this point. Have a seat, if you’d like. I’ve been on my rear end all day. I could do with some standing. It’s good for the legs, to keep the circulation going.”

His voice and his mannerisms reminded Natasha of her father, and she felt slightly more at ease, despite her better judgement.

“What’s your name?”

“Natasha. Natasha Rostova-Bolkonskaya.”

“That’s quite the surname you’ve got.”

“I was just married,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to lose my maiden name.”

Denisov smiled good-naturedly. “Understandable. I wouldn’t want to lose my name either. I’ve already had to give up half of it. I was ‘Vasily’ before I joined, but there was already a ‘Vasily’ here. So I became Vaska.”

“How did you join?”

“I served in the Great War. When I came home, I worked in a shipyard in New York City, until Kuragin recruited me. There’s not much more to tell. I haven’t led a very interesting life.”

This struck Natasha as something of a contradiction, though she didn’t have it in her to say so.

“And how about you? How did you come to be here?”

Natasha bit her lip. “How much did Hélène tell you?”

“There was a mix-up at the bank. A mistake.” He paused, leaning forward on his elbows. “And now it seems they’re bringing you along on jobs.”

She nodded slowly.

“I’ve heard you caused a bit of a commotion with Hélène.”

Natasha sighed and curled her fingers in her skirt. Hélène’s skirt, she remembered. “She did something terrible.”

Denisov shook his head with a heavy sigh. He looked more disappointed than horrified. Natasha wondered how often Hélène did terrible things, if the news of it elicited such an apathetic reaction from him. “That girl,” he said, “would be so much happier if she didn’t try to be her father.”

Happier. Natasha almost scoffed in disgust. Who cared about Hélène’s happiness? Who could care, when she didn’t seem to value anyone else’s?

“I’m sorry about this,” he said. “Everything will be alright. Don’t you worry.”

Natasha looked up at him through the hair that had fallen across her face. “Now you’re sounding like Anatole.”

Denisov chuckled. “God forbid. He’s a good kid. Until he starts listening to that sister of his.”

Natasha drew her knees up to her chin and folded her arms around her shins. The fabric of the skirt was scratchy beneath her chin. It smelled of something smoky and warm, and vaguely metallic, and most surprisingly of all, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

“I’ve known them since they were tiny things,” he continued blithely, and gestured towards his waist, as if to indicate the height of a toddler, “and Tolya’s always hero-worshipped Hélène. He used to follow her around like a puppy.”

Natasha almost laughed. “You’re talking like you’re their father or something.”

“I may just as well have been. I was there when they were born. The three of them. I was there when their father died.”

“The three of them?”

“They have an older brother. Or _had_ , I suppose. Minute he turned eighteen, he bought a ticket for New York and never looked back. He tried to bring the other two with him, but Vasily wouldn’t have any of that. They had a huge blow-up about it the night before he left, and we haven’t heard from him since.”

What kind of parent, Natasha wondered, would want this for their children?

“Was he a terrible man, their father?” she asked. “Was he cruel to them?”

“Oh, no,” Denisov said. “I don’t think so. He might not have been a good man, but he was a good father. Him and Hélène were joined at the hip. I’ve never seen a little girl who idolized her father quite the way she did.” His voice grew soft and pensive. “She was around your age when he died.”

Hard as it was to imagine their father, it was even harder to picture a young Hélène. She didn’t seem like the sort of person who had ever been a child, much less anyone who had ever idolized someone other than herself.

“You remind me a little of her, actually. When she was much younger, that is,” he added, seeing her horrified expression. “She’s jaded now. Angrier. Angry at the world, I think. But she wasn’t always this hard.”

Natasha bit the inside of her cheek. “I can’t imagine that.”

“It’s not easy, I know. I could hardly believe it, seeing how she’s turned out. But they’ve been through a lot, and adversity does funny things to people.” He eyed her pointedly. “To all of us.”

“I won’t pity her,” Natasha snapped. “I can’t.”

“I’m not asking for your pity, and I wouldn’t ask on her behalf. Only your understanding.”

“She can’t have that either.”

Denisov sighed and turned his attention back to his whittling. “That’s your decision. I can respect that.”

“I just want to go home,” she said.

“I’m sure you do. I do as well, sometimes. But we’ll get you home soon enough.”

“You people keep saying that. But I’m starting to wonder how honest you’re being.”

“I’ll talk to Hélène,” he said firmly. “We’ll figure something out. She listens to me, usually. More than she does to the others, at any rate.”

Before Natasha could say anything in response to that, the door opened again. In the doorway stood Fedya, with an even darker look painted on his face than before.

“You’re back early,” Denisov said.

“Yeah, well, the boss changed her mind. She wants to talk. I’ll watch the girl.”

Denisov stood up and stretched, giving Natasha a broad, genuine smile. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Rostova-Bolkonskaya.”

“Thank you,” Natasha said. She found herself smiling back without realizing why.

It was nice, for a moment. But it couldn’t last. It never could, with these people.

“Do you always have to bleed decency?” Fedya grunted, one eyebrow tilted at an annoyed angle. Denisov was the older of the two, she knew, but the harsh lighting of the room roughened the angles of his face into something coarser and wearier than Denisov’s.

“It’s called being a gentleman, young man. Perhaps if you ask nicely, I’ll teach a few tips.”

Fedya snorted and clapped him on the back. “You’re a good man, Vaska. Too good for any of us.”

Natasha couldn’t help but agree with that.

“Where’s Lena?”

“Conference room.” He made a cutthroat gesture across his jugular. “Tread lightly. She’s not in a good mood.”

Denisov grimaced and slid past Fedya without another word.

But instead of joining her in the room, Fedya too stepped out into the hallway and slammed the door shut behind him. She heard the lock turning and clicking into place.

If she didn’t have solitude, now at least she had the illusion of it.

There was nothing for her to do, not unless she fancied counting the number of stains in the wallpaper. For a moment, she almost wished that they’d left her with Anatole instead. He was irritating and obnoxious, but he could at least hold a conversation, and he tolerated her threatening jibes. Fedya was about as entertaining as a brick wall, and he’d probably react more violently if she decided to alleviate her boredom by insulting him.

Well, if she couldn’t have a chat, then maybe she’d have revenge. Her arm was still hurting from where he had grabbed her—she’d have a bruise in the morning for sure—so perhaps the broken nose hadn’t taught him better than to manhandle her like a sack of flour. She couldn’t take him in a fight, that much was sure, but it was satisfying to imagine how Hélène would react if she escaped under his watch.  

On instinct, her hand migrated to her blouse pocket to fiddle with the hatpin. That trick probably wouldn’t work this time around. Fedya was quick and clever, more than Anatole was, at any rate. She would have to be more careful in her approach—or maybe take the opposite route and go absolutely stark raving mad.

And after all, her mind supplied in a moment of crazed not-logic, if he ended up killing her, wouldn’t she be free anyway?

Natasha pressed her mouth to the crack in the door. If he was going to be stoic and moody and ignore her, then she would make herself irritating until he couldn’t. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said.

“You can hold it,” he snapped.

Ah. So, that was all it took to get his attention.

She leaned in a little closer. “Is there a bathroom in this house?”

Something hard and heavy slammed into the door. His fist, probably. Natasha leapt back. Then Fedya peered through the keyhole. She momentarily considered jabbing his eye with her hatpin.

“Shut up and stay put.”

“You know,” she said, almost shouting now, in the most obnoxious voice she could manage, “I can either go in the bathroom, or I can go here. It’s your choice.”

She heard him mutter something angry-sounding under his breath. “Walk to the other side of the room and I’ll open the door.”

* * *

 

To say that Hélène was beginning to panic would have been a bit of an understatement.

It wasn’t just nerves. And it wasn’t apprehension either. What she was feeling now was probably more akin to gut-sinking dread, or _oh-dear-God-what-the-hell-have-I-done_.

Even seeing Denisov’s face couldn’t quite seem to put a damper on the knot of tension resting at the pit of her stomach, which it usually did. He looked confused, but more than that, concerned.

Perhaps she was telegraphing her worries a little too loudly. Hélène told her hands to stop shaking and straightened her spin, forcing her face into resolute blankness. This wasn’t fear. This was the onset of a plan. She could handle it, all she needed to do was convince her gut of that.

“You wanted to see me?” said Denisov. His boots were covered in sawdust and wood shavings. She had probably interrupted him during his leisure time, and oddly enough, the thought of it almost made her want to apologize.

Hélène nodded at the chair across from her. “Take a seat.”

Denisov frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“I need your help. The others might not listen to you, but they trust you more than me.”

“Slow down, Lena,” he said. “What’s happening?”

Hélène’s face tightened. She felt her throat constrict on itself. “They’re restless. And everything that goes wrong these days is my fault, apparently.”

Denisov sighed. “You’re the boss. It comes with the territory. They’ll quiet down for a while, now that you’ve been on a supply run.”

“No, they won’t. That’s why they’re upset. There was almost nothing left in the register. I didn’t realize how little we’d gotten. And now they expect me to recoup it somehow.”

“Perhaps there’ll be a reward for the girl. If there’s hostage money, it’ll get us out of the red.”

“I _know_ that,” she snapped. “But I don’t even know how to find someone to arrange a drop.”

“I actually wanted to speak to you about her.” Hélène stared at him expectantly and Denisov swallowed, as if fortifying himself. “I think it might be best to just end this as soon as we can.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you have no plan, Lena,” he said gently. “No plan to get rid of her, at least. I’m concerned.”

“Aren’t we all.”

“Just drop her off somewhere. No sense dragging this out.”

“You sound like Fedya.”

Denisov’s face softened. “I’m only saying what I think is sensible. Whatever you think you’re going to get ain’t worth the risk.”

“Drop it, Vaska.”

“She’s only a young girl, Lena. She’s frightened.”

“And I’m not?” she spat. “If I don’t figure out a way to bring more money in, they’re going to crucify me.”

“That’ll be alright. We’ll manage until you can find a bigger job.”

“They might not wait that long.”

“You could always leave,” Denisov said quietly.

“And go where?”

“You could find Ippolit. You know his offer still stands.”

Hélène snorted. “That’s not going to happen.”

“You’re not the only one who’s gonna be affected by your choices. It’s not just you. It’s Fedya. It’s Anatole. It’s Natasha as well.”

“That’s been made abundantly clear to me,” she said drily.

“Try to remember how she must feel. Think of how _you_ would feel if you were her. Think of how you felt the last time someone put you in a new, frightening situation.”

Hélène sighed. “I already have enough on my plate. Don’t make me feel bad for this too.”

“I didn’t set out to make you feel bad. But don’t you think that’s saying something, that you do?”

“It’s not,” she snapped. “It’s weakness. God knows she’s enough of a headache without me babysitting her.”

“Hélène Vasilievna,” Denisov said sternly.

It was more the patronym than the sharp tone of his voice that made her retort wither and die on her tongue. There were only two men in the world who could make her feel like a child again, and one of them lay buried in an unmarked grave in a church plot somewhere in Kansas.

Hélène ran a hand down her face. “I’m sorry, Vaska. I never meant to make such a mess.”

He sighed and squeezed her shoulder. “It’s not all your fault. You’re working against hard odds.”

“I should’ve worked harder. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

“With the girl?”

“With _everything_.” She looked up at him again, struggling to hold her composure. “I wish I know what my father would have done.”

“Lena,” he said, sternly now, “you can’t do this like your father. You have to do what Hélène Kuragina would do.”

* * *

 

The bathroom was small and grubby and ugly and reeked of something awful. There were no windows. A bath in one corner, and a line of mold and rotted tiles at its base. A sink, and above that, a water-splattered mirror tucked in front of a medicine cabinet. A vent in the ceiling, though that was sealed off and by all accounts far too small for a grown woman to squeeze through.

It would seem, upon a first glance, that there would be no possible methods of escape here. Nothing but the door and the hallway, and Fedya still standing guard and no doubt armed to the teeth.

Natasha huffed and ran her hands through her hair, pacing in small, worried circles. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. The girl looking back at her was almost unrecognizable. Hair askew in a wild black tangle, eyes darkly-lined and bloodshot, nails chipped and bleeding, an ugly purple mark in the shape of a handprint rising to color on her arm.

Something sparked in Natasha’s mind, something resembling an idea. It was far-fetched, dangerous, unlikely to be successful and very likely to end in disaster, but it was something, and something was better than nothing.

Her reflection nodded at her. Quickly and quietly as she could manage, Natasha bent down to untie one of her boots and slipped it over her hand. The floor tiles were cold, even through her socks.

 _Here goes nothing_ , she thought, and slammed the heel into the mirror.

The reflection shattered with a bone-rattling crash. Natasha winced and recoiled, covering her face with her arms as broken shards rained over the floor.

Fedya pounded on the door.

“What the hell was that noise?”

“I just dropped something,” Natasha said, though she knew full well he wouldn’t buy it.

As if on cue, the doorknob turned and the door itself began to rattle in its frame.

“Don’t come in! I’m not decent!” she shrieked.

The rattling stopped.

“What are you doing in there?” he yelled.

“I’m trying to pee!” she said shrilly, flushing the toilet for effect.

After re-tying her boot, Natasha ripped some cloth off the hem of her skirt and wrapped it around her hand. Her handiwork lay at her feet. When she looked down, a dozen differently-angled Natashas looked back up at her. She picked up the largest shard with her bandaged hand.

Mirror-Natasha shot her a reassuring smile.

“What’s taking so long?” Fedya demanded.

“Nothing!”

“Then hurry it up!”

Slowly, Natasha turned the doorknob with her other hand until the lock gave a satisfying click.

She could do this. He wouldn’t expect it from her. One sharp movement, one quick burst of strength—she didn’t even have to kill him. All she needed was to get close enough. That she had gotten this far already was a miracle in and of itself. Perhaps she could stretch her luck for a few more seconds.

It lasted, quite literally, for three.

Natasha moved without thinking, which was probably her first mistake. Through the door, then at Fedya, glass shard in hand, howling like a banshee and with every bit of strength she could summon.

Disappointingly, he only seemed mildly surprised.

Fedya moved quickly and caught her by the wrist before she could even nick him. He squeezed until the shard of glass clattered to the ground.

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head in disapproval. “You’re a slow learner, aren’t you?”

“Let go of me,” she hissed.

“Are you stupid or something? Did your ma drop you on your head as a kid?”

“I said let go of—”

“What the fuck were you thinking? Were you gonna slash me up and then bolt for the highway? Huh? Were you gonna try take me hostage?”

“I don’t know!” she spat. “I would’ve known if you hadn’t—”

“Would it really kill you to sit still for five goddamn seconds?”

“Get your meaty paws off me or so help me God I will—”

“What?” he said flatly. “Scream? Cry? Go running to Anatole?”

“You know what, Fedya? You can go—”

“I’m taking you to Hélène,” he snapped, and took off down the hall, dragging her along behind him. “Maybe she’ll knock some sense into that thick skull of yours.”


	8. The First Seduction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone attempts to leave the gang, just as they attract a new member.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: gun use/ threats in this chapter. 
> 
> We want to make it explicitly clear that we are not trying to romanticize the Kuragins in this verse! They are hella bad people here, and while they are compelling characters, most of their behaviour is p irredeemable in our eyes. 
> 
> Shoutout to @thewhiskerydragon, who writes prose that makes me cry and wrote super late so I would wake up to new changes on our google doc!

The last time Pierre had tried to put in his two weeks’ notice, Hélène had laughed in his face and then proceeded to calmly inform him that he would not be leaving her employment until she decided that she was done with him. Near tears, he had scurried back to his room and unpacked his suitcase just as quickly as he had packed it, and for the rest of the week, the smug glow of her face had sent him boiling in both anger in shame.

The following three attempts had gone down in a similar fashion, each more embarrassing and dispiriting than the last. But this one wouldn’t fall through. He would sooner jump from the highest window in the house than allow Hélène to humiliate him like that again. There were people depending on him now. Namely, Natasha and Andrei.

If this was what it felt like to be depended on, then he very much disliked it.

But in times like this, what he needed far outweighed what he liked, so at the crack of dawn, he hurried to his dresser and began to pack his suitcase. It was a testament both to his cowardliness and his stubbornness that it had become routine by now. Shoes. His coat, even though it was the middle of summer. Folded-up shirts and wrinkled trousers. A hip flask, filled to the brim with water. Cash, bundled up and tucked away into his heaviest pair of socks.

Now, all he needed was to actually go through with the damn thing.

Even with his suitcase in hand, it took almost a full five minutes for him to muster up the courage to knock on the door to the office.

“Come in,” came the response.

The hinges creaked loudly as the door swung open.

Hélène had her feet propped up on the desk and a cigarette in one hand. Lazy streams of smoke curled out of her mouth as she exhaled. The calmness was probably an act—God knew how high-strung she had been ever since the incident at the bank—but it only made him more nervous and nauseous than he already felt.

“Close the door,” she said.

Pierre cleared his throat. He didn’t like closed doors. Closed doors meant entrapment. Closed doors meant isolation, meant that Hélène had something to say that she didn’t want anyone else overhearing, meant that he would have to end up fumbling for the knob, meant an extra five or so seconds between him standing here and him running down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him.

Well, he supposed, if he was about to quit anyways, a little insolence couldn’t hurt him that much.

“I won’t take up much of your time,” he said, and made a point of nudging the door a little wider with the side of his foot.

Hélène lowered the cigarette and raised her eyebrow in tandem, like flipping a switch. It could have been out of surprise or annoyance. Both, probably, knowing her. “Oh?”

Pierre’s grip tightened around the handle of his suitcase until the skin of his knuckles went white and he felt his nails digging little half-moons into his palms. “I’m resigning,” he announced. “I’ve had enough of this circus. I can take the girl with me. I’ll bring her back home and this whole mess can be over.”

The trick, he figured, was this: if you wanted something done, it was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. And seeing as how every request he had made to quit had been promptly shot down like the vulture he had once seen Dolokhov bullseye as easily as throwing a dart, it almost seemed the logical progression that a demand would be harder to refuse.

“You can’t have the girl,” she said, flicking a dot of ash onto the floor. “She’s a valuable asset.”

Pierre was so stunned that she hadn’t immediately laughed him out of the office that it took almost a full thirty seconds before he could work out a proper response.

“You’ve done nothing with her so far,” he said. “There’s no point in keeping her locked in that room. Like you said, she’s more trouble than she’s worth. I can take her off your hands.”

This time, she blew the smoke in his direction. Pierre coughed and tried to fan it away. “She’s already made herself more useful than you.”

Pierre blinked. “What?”

Hélène folded her arms across her chest and raised the cigarette to her lips again. The cold, smug set of her face sent shivers down his spine. “We took her on a job. She did better than I expected. We’ve got quite the little actress on her hands. I think this one might be full of surprises.”

Pierre almost choked, though he wasn’t sure if it was on the smoke or his own shock. “You took her _with_ you?”

Hélène rolled her eyes. “Of course. What, did you think we were gonna leave her in the fruit aisle or something?”

“She shouldn’t have been there at all.”

“We didn’t have any other choice. I needed Fedya to drive, and frankly, I don’t trust you around her. Oh, don’t look so offended. You’re clumsy and easily-misled. It’s not an insult, it’s just common sense.”

“I’ve never given you a reason to mistrust me.”

Her eyes darted to the suitcase. Pierre abashedly moved to hide it behind his leg.

“Well, you sure haven’t given me one to trust you,” she said.

“You can trust me, Hélène, I swear.”

Hélène leaned back in her chair, evaluating him coldly. She had eyes like a coyote, he thought. Unflinching and stern. Eyes that looked like they were taking you apart, piece by piece, ligament by ligament, bone by bone.

Her voice was mocking when she spoke next. “Say I told you to take the girl to the side of the highway and shoot her. Would you?”

Pierre’s eyes dipped to the floor to avoid her coyote-stare.

Hélène sighed. Another waft of smoke struck him across the face. The room was probably twenty feet square, yet it felt like she had pressed his nose to the ashtray.

“My point exactly,” she said.

“This isn’t trust. It’s cruelty.”

“It’s both,” she said. “If you aren’t willing to do what I say without question, then you can’t be trusted.”

Pierre met her eyes again, forcing his own not to waver. “Which is why I can’t do this anymore.”

Hélène shrugged. “Try to walk out that door, then. See how long you last once I tell the others you’ve turned. I don’t think it’d be very long. But who knows? You might surprise me.”

His hands had become sweat-slick. Pierre dropped his suitcase to the floor when it threatened to slip out of his grip altogether. “Is this your way of saying that I’m a prisoner now?”

“Of course not,” she said. “But I would consider your next decision very, very carefully, if I were you.”

It was, by far, the most polite threat he had ever heard directed his way, and somehow the most chilling all the same.

“Hélène—”

“You still owe me, Bezukhov,” she said quietly. “Don’t you forget that.”

Pierre ground his molars together, but Hélène’s face remained infuriatingly pleasant. He couldn’t deny it—it was true, everything she said, but it didn’t make him feel any less outraged. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “You signed on for everything, Petrushka. Kidnapping and ransoming included.”

“Someone is going to end up dead and it’ll all be on your head.”

“I don’t care,” Hélène said bluntly. “It’s no skin off my back what happens to her. So long as she gets us a ransom, that’s all that matters.”

“She’s so young, Lena,” Pierre said softly. “She shouldn’t be tangled up in this.”

Hélène’s face hardened. “She’s old enough to be married. She’s old enough to interfere with our plans. And she’s old enough to nearly get us stuck and caught.”

“It’s not right.”

“It’s also”—she ground the end of her cigarette into the ashtray and watched as its smoldering remains went up in a curl of smoke—“not your decision.”

Pierre picked up his suitcase again. If it had felt light before, now, it could just as easily have been a dumbbell.

Hélène looked back to him with a sickly-sweet smile and tucked her feet under her desk. Now she sat upright, poised and polished like a proper lady. “It was lovely speaking with you. Now go run along and make yourself useful. You’re here for a reason.”

* * *

 

Someone had left the door to Hélène’s office wide open. Natasha heard their footsteps thundering down the opposite corridor just as she and Fedya rounded the bend at the top of the stairwell.

To her credit, she hadn’t gone quietly. His forearms were riddled with scratch marks. And though it was neither relevant nor recent, the bruise on his nose still hadn’t faded, which made her feel strangely satisfied.

Fedya rapped his knuckles against the doorframe. “Hélène? I need to talk to you.”

“You and the rest of the world,” said Hélène. “What is it now?”

Natasha dug in her heels as they screeched through the doorway. This room was nicer than the others she had seen thus far, though only marginally, and she wasn’t exactly sure if the word _nice_ could have been used to describe anything about the house. There was a desk, its tablestop soot-stained and bullet-ridden, and a tall leather chair which currently held a very frazzled-looking Hélène. Behind her was a window flanked by two empty bookcases. The symmetry was almost startling, until you took the fistholes in the left wall and the aged rusty stain splattered against the carpet into account, at which point the whole illusion fell apart.

“This one,” said Fedya.

He shoved Natasha forwards but kept his hold on her wrist, and she banged her hip against the desk, upending Hélène’s ashtray and a stack of papers.

“Let _go_ of me,” Natasha hissed.

“She never shuts up. It’s this, twenty-four-seven. On and on and—”

“Oh for the love of God, just let go of her, Fedya,” Hélène snapped.

Fedya’s grip softened instantly. Natasha took the opportunity to try give him another good slap across the forearm, which he distractedly fended off with his spare hand. “But Lena—”

“No buts.”

Fedya turned back to Natasha, still writhing and flailing. “Do you see this? If I let her go, she’ll claw me to ribbons.”

“I wouldn’t be fighting if—”

“This is pathetic,” said Hélène. “What are you, scared of her?”

“She broke my nose.”

“And I’ll break it again if you don’t—”

Hélène slammed her fist against the desk. Natasha and Fedya both fell silent and still.

“Drop it, Fedya,” she said, in a voice that was clearly struggling to remain patient.

“Fine.”

Fedya released her arm and raised his hands in mock-surrender. Natasha stepped back from him, almost until she reached the corner of the room.

“Now, what happened?” said Hélène.

The two of them spoke at the same time, overlapping:

“He dragged me down the hallway like some wild animal.”

“She was trying to escape again.”

Hélène’s eyebrows shot up. Natasha lowered her head and resolved to keep her mouth shut.

“She broke the downstairs mirror,” Fedya clarified. “With her shoe.”

Hélène sighed. “I liked that mirror.”

“Yeah, well, it’s in a million bits all over the bathroom floor now.”

Natasha shrank in on herself. Suddenly, her plan seemed childish and pathetic. Smashed glass. What the hell had she been thinking? Had that really been her, plucking wild ideas out of thin air and hoping for something to stick?

She felt Hélène’s eyes lingering on her longer than was appropriate. Eventually, she turned back to Fedya and said, “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

“Hell if I know. You’re the one calling the shots here. As you said.”

“Well, seeing as the mirror’s already broken, would you be a doll and clean it up for us? We don’t want any more incidents with broken glass.”

Natasha’s head snapped up.

“Get someone else to do it,” Fedya snapped. “I’m a gunman, not the hired help.”

“The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

A vein pulsed in his forehead. Finally, he sighed and said, “Alright, I’ll take care of it.”

Hélène smiled and leaned back in her seat. “Good boy.”

Fedya shot her a dark look and turned on his heel, slamming the door shut behind him. Natasha could hear him muttering to himself as his footsteps faded off down the hallway.

“Now, what are we going to do with you?”

Natasha swallowed and turned back to Hélène, whose face had gone cold and blank.

“I—ma’am—I’m sorry,” she said in a breathless rush. “I don’t know what I was thinking, it was so stupid, and I’m sorry if I hurt him, just don’t hurt me, please—”

Hélène held up her hands and sat on the ledge of her desk, seemingly a gesture of peace. “Look, I don’t care about the mirror. And I’m not surprised you tried to run again either.”

Natasha clenched her hands into fists to keep them from shaking. Whether it was out of fury or fear was impossible to tell. “You aren’t angry?”

“I’m always angry, sweetheart. But I can understand how you must feel.”

The tone of her voice had softened unexpectedly, but it only made Natasha angrier. How dare she condescend after everything that had happened. After everything she had done. If she was expecting Natasha to fall back into her honeypot, then she was in for a rude awakening.

“You don’t know me,” she snarled. “And you don’t understand a thing about me.”

Hélène sighed. She stood, still leaning against the desk but so that she was facing Natasha. “It’s a hard world out there, darling. Especially for women. We all have to do what we can to survive it. That’s what I know. And that’s all anyone needs to know.”

“My life wasn’t hard. Not until your friend held a gun to my head and dragged me into this mess.”

Hélène folded her arms across her chest. For a moment, her eyes looked ancient and furious. “I was fourteen the first time my father put a gun in my hand,” she said. “Life is hard. We all learn that, sooner or later.”

“It doesn’t have to be.”

Hélène tipped her head to the side. Her mouth curled into a catlike smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Ah, yes. You’re one of those optimists, aren’t you?

“And I suppose you’re a pessimist.”

This wasn’t her talking. This wasn’t Natasha. She was speaking with Natasha’s voice, looking through Natasha’s eyes, standing in Natasha’s body, but it wasn’t her. It couldn’t have been.

Hélène snorted. “Of course. Have to be, these days.”

“Your brother seems to think otherwise.”

“Anatole isn’t like me. He isn’t cut out for this life either. He’s like you. He wants to think that everything pans out in the end. That the world is softer than it really is. That things don’t matter. And you know what’s going to end up happening with him? He’s either going to learn his lesson the hard way, or he’ll dig his own grave with his idiocy. Same with you, doll.”

“And yet you’ve kept him around. I thought women—people like you didn’t put up with dead weight.”

“I do when I think they might carry some value.”

Something in the catch of Hélène’s voice made Natasha’s pulse stop for a moment.

“I don’t have anything to offer you,” she said quietly. “I’m not some gunslinger.”

“I’ve known that since the first day I met you. When you just stood there and waited for your man to save you.”

Natasha flushed indignantly. “I couldn’t exactly have done anything else, could I?”

“No, no, no. That’s where you’re wrong.” Hélène leaned forwards. Natasha, to her own surprise, didn’t even lean away. “There’s always something you can do. Always. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Natasha thought back to the hatpin and the broken mirror, and she realized that Hélène hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. Perhaps she was right, then.

Hélène considered Natasha for a second. “I’d bet you’ve never held a gun before, have you?”

* * *

 

Hélène brought her out to the back porch, a crumbling, rickety fixture that seemed barely able cling to the house, held on by loosening screws, spit, and prayers. The Bolonskys’ house had had a proper garden out back—a cobble walkway looping the perimeter, neatly-arranged patches of flowers segregated by color, a line of trellises for the strawberries and a wrought-iron bench where she and Andrei used to sit on lazy weekend afternoons.

Here, there was only a miserable little patch of scrubby grass and a spotted oak that looked like it had one proverbial foot in the grave. A flimsy whitewash picket fence was all that separated them from the endless, sepia stretch of the horizon. Natasha wouldn’t have been surprised to see a tumbleweed rolling by.

“It’s not a proper shooting range, but it’ll do,” said Hélène.

Natasha flinched at the sound of her voice. “I don’t like guns,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe in them.”

“Tough luck, sweetheart. Pacifists don’t make bank in this line of business.”

“These things kill.”

“Lucky for us,” Hélène snapped. “Feet shoulder width apart. And for fuck’s sake, if you keep slouching like that—”

“I can’t do this,” Natasha said. She sucked in a sharp breath, almost too quickly, and her diaphragm smarted in protest. “I don’t want to. I don’t want this.”

Hélène placed on hand on her stomach and the other between her shoulders and pushed in, until Natasha’s spine went ramrod straight.

“There,” she said. “Much better.”

Then she pressed the gun into Natasha’s hands, molding her fingers around the grip. The metal was hot and sweat-sticky. Engraved into the side of the barrel were initials, faded but still legible: _А.N.K & V.S.K. _

Natasha ran her fingers over them carefully. They felt worn, weathered. How long had they been there? Who had this gun belonged to before Hélène?

She blushed when she caught Hélène’s eye and moved her hands back to the trigger.

“It’s heavier than I thought,” Natasha said.

“Be careful,” Hélène said. “It’s old. Doesn’t handle well. And watch for the kickback.”

Gripping Natasha by the elbows, Hélène maneuvered the two of them until they squarely faced the tree.

“There. You’ve got a nice, easy target.”

 _Easy_ was being generous. The trunk was three feet wide tops, and Natasha still couldn’t seem to stand steady on her own feet even with Hélène practically holding her up.

“This isn’t the fucking corps de ballet. Stand like you mean it.”

Frowning, Natasha tried pushing her shoulders back the way she had seen Andrei do before heading to work. She must have done something right, because Hélène nodded and said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Okay, what do I do now?”

“Put your finger on the trigger-guard. No, not _there_ —okay, good. Keep it there until you’re ready to shoot.”

“How do I aim?”

Hélène rolled her eyes. “You point it at something and fire. It’s not complicated.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes in concentration and Hélène sighed. The hand on her left arm tightened.

“You don’t need to make a bullseye. We’re not looking for a perfect shot here. Sometimes, all you have to do is hit some shit.”

Natasha’s hands trembled. The gun barrel veered wildly, dangerously in all directions. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m shaking.”

“You can,” Hélène said. “Relax. It’s as easy as taking a breath. In, two, three, out, two, three.”

Natasha exhaled and pulled the trigger. The recoil alone would have knocked her flat on her back had Hélène not still been holding her, but the bang was enough to deafen her for a few moments, and she recoiled and curled in on herself. A clump of bark exploded in a shower of splinters.

“You can open your eyes,” Hélène said. “Have a look.”

“Did I hit anything?”

“See for yourself.”

Natasha’s eyes widened as she saw the bullet embedded in the trunk. Just a tiny sliver of lead, and around it, the bark had bent and warped as if fired through with a cannon. “Holy shit.”

Hélène smiled proudly and clapped her between shoulder blades. “You did that. Look at that, sweetheart. That’s all you.”

Natasha nodded, almost disbelievingly. The ringing still hadn’t faded. She wasn’t sure if it was from the gunshot or the sound of her own heart beating in her ears.

“It feels empowering, doesn’t it? No one can tell you what to do when you hold that in your hands.”

Natasha’s hands grew tight and heavy. She smelled sulphur and smoke and felt the rustle of the wind sweeping through her hair, pulling it loose.

They were alone, and outside the house. The road was even in sight. A ten-second sprint. That was all it would take.

Natasha took a step back and turned around to face Hélène. “I’m going to leave,” she said, tremulously but with growing confidence. “And you’re not gonna follow me.”

Hélène raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? And what’s stopping me?”

Natasha raised the gun again with trembling hands.

Hélène chuckled. “Darling, if you’re going to make threats, you have to be prepared to carry them out.”

“I’ll do it,” said Natasha.

“So shoot,” Hélène said calmly. “I doubt you have the guts to. But who knows? You might surprise me.”

She could do it. And after everything Hélène had done, didn’t she deserve it? Hadn’t she had this coming for a long time?

“I will,” Natasha said, wincing at how thin her voice sounded.

“Sure you will. And then you’ll run back to your boring house and your boring life with a boring husband who doesn’t give a shit whether you live or die.”

“Shut up!” Natasha snapped.

“I’m only telling you the truth. Say what you want about Fedya and Anatole, but at least I can depend on them. Who do you have? Your husband stood there and watched while we held a gun to your head.”

“Stop it,” she snarled.

“Do you think he even wants you back? Don’t you think he’d have found you by now if he really gave a damn about you?”

Natasha pulled the trigger.

But the gun only let out a useless click. Her stomach dropped to her heels. Her heart followed.

Hélène raised an eyebrow, as if scolding a toddler. “You didn’t really think I’d be stupid enough to give you a fully loaded gun, did you?”

Natasha began to stammer out a horrified apology, but Hélène silenced her with a sharp look. Then the gun was wrested from her hands. She didn’t have the energy to bother trying to hold onto it.

“I’m not angry. I expected this. I’m actually quite impressed at your resilience.”

“I’m sorry,” Natasha whispered.

Hélène replaced the gun in her hip holster. “It’s the sort of thing I would have done.”

“I’m sor—”

“Say the word ‘sorry’ one more time and I’ll put you back in that room with Fedya, you hear me?”

Natasha nodded and swallowed down the lump in her throat.

“You’re tougher than you think,” Hélène said sternly. “And you don’t need a man to come save you.”

And with that, in several quick strides, she was back at the porch and stretching her legs across the tumbledown steps and pulling a lighter and a box of cigarettes out of her pocket with a casual ease that was absolutely unjustifiable given what had just happened. Natasha stared at her in bewilderment.

“You’re not gonna put me back in the room?”

Hélène shrugged. “Not right now, at least. Unless you want me to?”

Natasha shook her head furiously.

“That’s what I thought. Now, are you gonna sit, or are you gonna keep standing there till your legs grow into the ground?”

Her feet led her back to the porch without her even giving them permission to. The foundation creaked beneath her as she settled onto the step, keeping a few feet between herself and Hélène.

Hélène offered her a cigarette. “Smoke?”

Natasha glared at her suspiciously. “Why?”

“No ulterior motive. You look like you could use one.” Hélène smirked. “You don’t have to pretend not to like ‘em, darling. I’m not gonna judge.”

“My husband doesn’t like cigarettes. He doesn’t know my cousin used to sneak me them from the drugstore when we were teenagers.”

Hélène sighed as she lit Natasha a cigarette and handed it over. “God, your life must be so boring.”

Natasha took a deep drag and exhaled. She could hardly remember the last time she had smoked. The taste of it was unfamiliar to the point of shock. “My mother’d kill me if she could see me now. When we were little, she used to tell me and my cousin that if we smoked, then mobsters would come and snatch us.”

Hélène snorted. “Ironic.”

“I’d say it was more clairvoyant than anything.”

“Have you ever actually seen a mobster?”

Natasha raised her eyebrow. “I’ve seen you and the others, haven’t I?”

Hélène flicked her cigarette to the ground. “This stuff is small potatoes, really.”

“What’s big potatoes, then?”

That earned her a snort. “Big potatoes. You’re funny.”

“I’ve heard some names. I don’t think they’re anything to do with you guys, though.”

Hélène shrugged. “Dunno. We all know each other, mostly.” She shot Natasha a sideways look, halfway between amusement and warning. “Doesn’t mean we always get along, though.”

“I’ve read enough dime novels to know that,” said Natasha. “But there were always stories, when I was a kid. I dunno how true they were. Marya—my godmother, that is—she used to keep a shotgun in her dresser because she was afraid that No Name Buono would try and burgle the house in the dead of night.”

“No Name Buono? I knew him,” Hélène said airily. “Nice guy. I hear he gets out in less than ten years.”

Natasha raised an incredulous eyebrow. “You know these people?”

“You thought I was pulling your leg? Lay it on me, sweetheart. I’m an encyclopedia.”

“Two Guns?”

“Got caught in a shootout and drove his car into a ditch.”

“Old Creepy?”

Hélène cracked a smile and leaned back. “Still kicking. Somehow.”

“Pretty Boy Drubetskoy?”

“Dead. Quite recently, actually.”

“The Blonde Tigress?”

“Don’t know,” Hélène said. “She was never caught.”

“How about Kraggin?”

Hélène hesitated. Natasha pressed on.

“He was a legend in our town. I don’t remember when they said he arrived. I was only little. Or it could’ve been before I was born. His gang came all the way from _Chicago_. I’d never even been to the next town over, nevermind someplace like that. The neighborhood kids were all scared witless of him. I mean, we didn’t know what he had done—we probably didn’t even know what a mobster was at the time—but we thought he was just terrifying and amazing.” Natasha felt herself smiling. “I used to make up backstories for him. If I didn’t know something, I’d invent something. God, I used to scare the crap out of my cousin with the stuff I’d come up with.”

“‘Kraggin’,” Hélène said, shaking her head as smoke streamed out of her nostrils. “He always hated that name.”

Natasha frowned. “You know him?”

Hélène smiled lazily. “It was ‘Kuragin’, not ‘Kraggin’, actually. Though I don’t suppose the folks around these parts would’ve known any different. Couldn’t hear a Russian name without butchering it. It’s a goddamn miracle his parents got through Ellis Island intact.”

“I’ve heard that name before,” Natasha said.

“That’s because it’s mine.” Hélène flicked away a dot of ash. It landed on Natasha’s skirt. “Elena Kuragina. And my brother is Anatole Kuragin, and my old man is Vasily Kuragin. You get the picture.”

“I don’t understand,” Natasha said quietly.

Hélène raised an eyebrow. “What, do you need me to draw up a family tree or something?”

“Your father was Kraggin?”

“One and the same.”

Natasha drew in a sharp breath and Hélène sighed.

“He wasn’t some kind of boogeyman. He liked scrambled eggs on toast. He used to listen to Jelly Roll Morton records and dance in the kitchen when he was frying up breakfast. And sometimes before he left for work, he’d forget to tie his shoes. He was just a normal person.” The cigarette in her hands dipped, and so did her smile. “Well, not normal. He _was_ a mobster. But you get my drift.”

Natasha wasn’t entirely sure if she did.

“This was his gun,” she continued, tracing her fingernail along the barrel engraving. “It helps me feel like he’s still here.”

“So the letters…?”

“His initials. And my mother’s.” She smiled, and there was something achingly sad in it that made Natasha’s heart hurt, despite herself. “He was a bit of a romantic.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Natasha said quietly.

Hélène shrugged and blew out a puff of smoke. “Nothing to be sorry for. You’re not the one who killed him.”

Natasha looked back to her cigarette, almost burnt out by now, and then at her shoes. “I didn’t imagine a mobster like Kraggin—Kuragin, I mean—would have it in him to be a romantic.”

“He wasn’t a romantic when he went to work. That was only for our mother.”

A petulant smirk tugged the corner of Natasha’s mouth upright. “Doesn’t look like you inherited his romanticism.”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. But it’s not important. I’m a hardass because I have to be,” she said. “Not because I enjoy it.”

“You make it sound easy.”

Hélène shrugged. “S’easier than being nice. Hurts less too. If you do a good enough job at cramming away all that emotional crap. Can’t have your feelings hurt if you don’t have any to begin with.”

Natasha frowned.

Hélène laughed and slapped Natasha’s knee. “I’m only yanking your chain. I may be a stone cold bitch, but I’m not heartless. Sad truth’s that men’ll never take you seriously unless you show them you’re twice as tough as they are.”

“If it’s an act, it’s a damn convincing one.”

“If you want anyone to listen to you, they either have to like you or fear you.” She ground the butt of her cigarette into the dirt, then stomped on it with the heel of her shoe. “I think it’s obvious which one I chose.”

Natasha followed suit. “I’d rather be liked than feared.”

“It’s not easy to have both. But you’re a likeable person. Anatole seems to think that way, at least.”

Natasha’s face went hot. Of everything that had happened in the past ten minutes, this seemed almost trivial in comparison. So why did this of all things stick? Why was she so embarrassed?

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

Hélène rolled her eyes, looking almost bored. “He hasn’t stopped jabbering about you since we met you. He has the attention span of a goldfish, and somehow you’ve managed to hold it for more than two seconds. It’s an all-time record.”

Natasha flushed even darker. “Oh. Oh, well, I—”

“I think your hair would look pretty shorter,” Hélène said abruptly, shifting to lean her elbow against a panel of siding. “What do you think?”

Natasha touched her hair self-consciously. “I don’t know. I’ve always worn it long. And I don’t think my husband would like me to look like one of those flapper girls.”

Hélène snorted. “Who gives a shit what he thinks? Not his hair, not his decision.”

This, Natasha thought, was sound enough logic.

“What if I like wearing it long?”

“Well, if you like looking like something from when your grandmother was little, then that’s your prerogative. But don’t you think it’s time to get with the times?”

Natasha frowned. “It’s not old-timey.”

“This is 1932, sweetheart. Leave the nineteenth century behind. I’m saying this as a friend.”

Friend. _Friend_. What nerve she had, referring to herself as a friend. It was so ridiculous that Natasha almost scoffed out loud, though strangely, she found it more amusing than maddening now.

“What do you think I should do then?” she said.

Hélène stuck another cigarette between her teeth and leaned back. The porch groaned beneath her elbows. “What do you say we give it a trim?”

* * *

 

The bathroom mirror may have been smashed to pieces—pieces which Fedya had done a frankly shoddy job of cleaning up—but one of the larger shards had managed to stay in its frame. Hélène had Natasha sit herself on the rim of the tub while she worked away at her hair with a pair of scissors.

Natasha craned her neck and straightened her back to try catch a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror-shard, but Hélène’s shoulder blocked the way. She didn’t like it, not knowing what was being done to her appearance. It occurred to her that Hélène may have done this on purpose, to better surprise her when she finally finished the cut.

The thought was the opposite of reassuring.

“Have you done this before?” Natasha asked.

“On myself, mostly,” Hélène said. “Fedya too. Tolya won’t let me even touch his hair.”

Natasha laughed at that. The scissors went _snip_ , and a startlingly long lock of hair went sailing to the floor. She watched as it curled, black and silky, against the white of the tiles.

“Should I be worried?”

“Nah,” Hélène said, stepping back to consider her work. “He’s just particular about his looks.”

Natasha laughed again. “I could tell. I’ve seen the way he fusses over his hair.”

“Oh, trust me, he fusses over everything, sweetheart. He takes longer to put himself together on a morning than most girls do. Used to drive our father mad. And now it drives me mad.” Hélène gently ran her fingertips across Natasha’s cheekbone. “Look at you. So cute and quiet. You’re not a fussy person, are you, Tasha?”

Natasha shrugged, hoping Hélène wouldn’t see the way she had begun to blush. “Dunno. Depends.”

“On what?”

“On what I’m fussing about.”

_Snip, snip._

“How about hair?” Hélène offered.

Natasha considered this for a moment as another few inches of hair fell away. “Not anymore.”

Hélène’s face cracked into a satisfied grin. “That’s my girl,” she said.

“When did you first bob yours?”

“Back in the twenties. I don’t remember when exactly. But I haven’t worn it long since.” The scissors paused for a moment. “I’ve never regretted it. You won’t either.”

Natasha only hoped this was true.

After another few minutes, Hélène pursed her lips and folded one arm across her stomach. With her spare hand, she tipped Natasha’s chin upwards and flicked away stray clump of hair from her shoulder, analyzing her with all the intense scrutiny of a critic staring down a painting at an exhibition.

Eventually, she tossed the scissors into the cabinet and said, “Do you want to have a look?”

Natasha nodded with nervous hesitance. Hélène helped her to her feet, brushing off the loose hairs on her blouse and skirt and running her fingers over Natasha’s scalp to admire her handiwork.

“Close your eyes,” she said.

Natasha did. She felt a gentle pressure on her shoulders as she was led a few steps forwards, and then turned to the left.

Hélène gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “Tell me what you think.”

Natasha opened her eyes and saw her reflection. The girl looking back at her was unrecognizable. Older somehow, worldly, mature, _sophisticated_. She could have been from Chicago or New York City. She looked like someone who knew how to live life. Someone who knew how to have fun.

But all she managed to say was: “It looks different.”

“Good different?”

Natasha raised one hand to her newly-shorn bangs and was almost stunned when the girl in the mirror followed suit. “Good different,” she echoed. Mirror-Natasha’s mouth curled into a grin. “I….I think I really dig this.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Hélène stepped back and raked her eyes up and down Natasha’s figure. “Let me get you something nicer to wear. I’m getting depressed just looking at you in these rags.”

Natasha was led to the upstairs bedroom next, this one evidently belonging to Hélène herself, and ushered her behind a paper screen, where she had her change out of her ratty things. Natasha chucked her old clothes—Hélène’s clothes, technically—over the frame of the screen, and jimmied herself into the dress that Hélène tossed her.

“Need any help?” said Hélène.

Natasha stepped around the screen, trying to tug the skirt down. It was a fruitless task. For a woman who wasn’t exceptionally small, Hélène’s clothing choices—at least, what she had loaned to Natasha—told a different story.

“Oh, Tasha,” Hélène crooned. “Look at yourself. You’re a star.”

“Are you sure it’s not too short?”

“That’s the style, dollface. Now, give us a twirl.”

Natasha turned back to the mirror and smoothed her hands down the dress. Tight, almost low-cut, it verged on scandalous, the sort of thing that Marya would have thrown a fit at, but she found that she very much appreciated the way it lengthened her legs, drew her in thinner and taller and more confident-looking.

Hélène watched her with poorly-concealed amusement and something else that Natasha couldn’t quite place.

“Should we show the others?”  

Natasha wasn’t sure how much of a say she had in this. But that didn’t matter. She wanted to show them.

“Let’s,” she said.

Hélène winked and turned to the door.

“Fedya, get your ass in here!”

“Christ, woman,” he snapped, and stormed into the room still holding a gun and a rag. “What is it now?”

Hélène rolled her eyes and gestured at Natasha. “Well?”

Fedya looked at Natasha, then at Hélène, then back at Natasha. “She looks just like you,” he said blankly. “You’ve made her into a mini-Lena.”

Oddly enough, Natasha didn’t entirely mind the thought of that.

“Cute, isn’t she?” Hélène said, toying with a lock of Natasha’s hair.

Fedya shrugged and turned his attention back to polishing his gun.

Hélène sighed despairingly, muttering something about _men_ under her breath, and walked back to the doorway. “Tolya? Tolya, you there?”

“He’s eating his dinner,” said Fedya.

“He can take a break for a minute,” Hélène said. “Go and fetch him, would you, Fyedka?”

Fedya’s eyes snapped back towards her with a look of pure vexation. “Are you kidding me now?”

Hélène kissed his cheek. “You know I’m not.”

“Look, the mirror was one thing, but I’m not your goddamn messenger boy, and I won’t—”

“Fyodor Ivanovich,” Hélène snapped, stern now, and Natasha giggled into her hand.

Fedya slammed the gun to the dresser. “Fine,” he said. “Fine, I’ll do this, but then that’s—”

“You’re so sweet,” Hélène said, and smacked him lightly on the backside as he headed back out into the hallway. Fedya snapped the rag at her in retaliation.

Hélène threw Natasha a conspiratorial look, as if the two of them had just shared an inside joke. “A little kick in the pants, that’s all it takes with him.”

A moment later, Fedya came back into the room, dragging Anatole behind him, who was evidently midway through a list of complaints.

“—then you can ask her how _she’d_ feel if I interrupted halfway through her dinner—”

“Tolya,” Hélène said sweetly, “don’t be rude. We have something to show you.”

She gestured to Natasha, and Anatole’s head turned to follow her hand.

He gawked. Like a scarecrow. Or a cow. Something dumb and immobile and wide-eyed. Natasha felt heat rising to her cheeks, and oddly enough, she didn’t mind at all.

“You look really nice,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Natasha.

Fedya rolled his eyes with long-suffering sigh. “Jesus Christ.”

“I like your hair,” Anatole continued. “It’s…nice.”

Fedya reached over and snapped a finger in front of Anatole’s eyes. He startled, and they snapped back into focus.

Natasha laughed.

“She looks the part now, doesn’t she?” said Hélène.

Anatole blinked. “What part?”

Hélène smiled at Natasha. For the first time since they had met, her eyes were more inviting than they were frightening. “She’s one of us now.”


	9. The Celebration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha makes an error in her judgement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay in getting this one up! We have a bit of an indulgent project that's been eating up all of our time!
> 
> Also, if anyone's ever looked up mobsters from the 30s, their names are hilarious, and Old Creepy and the Blonde Tigress were legit people. Fun facts we can attribute to this fic. 
> 
> Thanks for all your support! If you like, consider leaving us a kudo or comment!

Dinner for Natasha was a cold tin of spam, a slice of not-stale bread, and a fried egg. A week ago, she would have scoffed and turned her nose up—literally—at such a meal, but now it seemed like the most satisfying supper she had ever had. Andrei would have been horrified at how she scarfed the lot of it down and then asked for seconds.

But then again, Andrei wasn’t here.

Neither were any of the others, for that matter. It was nice, having a minute to herself without the chatter and the vague smell of gunpowder and perfume that hung over every other room, or at least seemed to follow Hélène. And to think all it had taken was a polite request for some privacy, away from the gambling and smoking and drinking the others were no doubt getting up to.

Natasha had just finished her not-much-of-a-meal when she heard floorboards groaning and then a quiet knock at the door and then an even quieter voice ask, “Tasha? Can I come in?”

Natasha’s eyes flicked up. Pierre was standing in the doorway, a suitcase in hand, wearing an unusually clean pair of trousers and a shirt that looked like it had been ironed within the past week, which, given present company, came as quite a shock.

“Suppose I can’t stop you,” she said sullenly.

Pierre closed the door behind him and set his suitcase on the floor. It looked full to bursting at the seams, and the buckles were straining against their bolts.

“If you’re here to apologize, it’s a little late for that,” she said before he could even open his mouth.

“I’m not here to apologize.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I’m leaving. I want you to come with me,” he said. “We’ll run and they won’t even know we’re missing until the morning.”

Natasha’s brow hardened. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because I’m a friend,” he pressed on. “Because you knew me before all of this started. Because I care about you and Andrei and I’m _concerned_ for you.”

“I can handle myself.”

“You can’t trust them. They kidnapped you, for Christ’s sake.”

“They did,” Natasha said coldly. “And you helped them.”

He faltered for a moment. “That’s true,” he said, in a slow, thick voice. “And I regret that. But that doesn’t change the fact that they’re dangerous, bad people. I don’t care how friendly they seem. I don’t care if you think she’s nice or if he’s cute or—”

“How stupid do you think I am?” she snarled.

Pierre flinched. “What?”

“Are you just an idiot, or do you really think all women are that mindless? Jesus Christ, Pierre, does Andrei know you think that lowly of me?” He began to stammer out an apology, but Natasha cut him off. “They’ve both treated me better than you have. What does that say about you?”

Pierre fell silent.

“You work with them,” she continued. “You’ve been working with them and helping them for months while the rest of us have been worried sick about you. Don’t you dare criticize me. You’ve lost the right.”

“I’m only saying this because I’m concerned for you.”

“Don’t kid yourself. You’re only feeling guilty.”

“Both,” he said sheepishly. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough,” she said.

“I know,” he said quietly, defeatedly.

Natasha sighed and pushed her plate away. Seeing him look so guilty didn’t make her feel as satisfied as she had thought it would have. The taste of spam lingered uncomfortably in her mouth.

“I know you’re angry with me,” he said softly. “But don’t you want to come home?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then let me help you.”

Natasha raised her head. In the lamplight and his ill-fitting jacket, he looked startlingly small for all his six-feet-something, but more than that, pathetic and even a little frightened.

“Are you really being serious?” she said.

“Yes. I’ve had enough. I’m leaving and I want to get you back home.”

She scowled at the floor. “Don’t joke with me.”

“I’m not. I should’ve done this long ago. I’ve tried before, but I always chickened out each time. I’m going through with it now. I’m sneaking out and then I’m gone.”

Natasha thought of the gleam of Fedya’s gun, and her heart quickened in dread. “You’re gonna get caught.”

“Not if I leave now.”

“Hélène’ll get mad.”

“She won’t. Not till she realizes I’m gone. And by then it’ll be too late.”

Natasha shook her head. Her hands tightened in her lap. “You can’t go. You’ll die out there. Think of how hot and dry it is. The next town’s—God, I don’t even know how far away it is.”

“That’s why I’m taking a car.”

“They’ll _hear_ it, Pierre.”

“But they won’t run after me. I’m not worth it.”

“And what if they just shoot at you instead?”

Pierre swallowed. “Only Dolokhov’s a good shot out of the lot of them. And even he can’t hit a target speeding down the road when it’s this dark out.”

Natasha bit her lip. “I need to think about this.”

Pierres sighed and set down his suitcase. “It can’t wait, Tasha. I’m leaving tonight, or I’ll never get to leave at all.”

She pushed herself off the bed and took a few small steps towards him. “It’s going to be risky, isn’t it?”

“Not as risky as staying here.”

“Maybe staying would be safer. We have their protection as long as we don’t fight it.”

“Only so long as they think you’re useful. Do you honestly think Hélène has qualms about turning on any of us?”

“She said that they look after their own.”

“She lied. She always lies. How else do you think she got me roped into this whole mess?”

A vague memory bubbled up to the surface of Natasha’s mind. Andrei had never told her much about his falling-out with Pierre, only that it had involved a woman. A stranger.

Presumably, as she now realized, Hélène.

Unease settled into Natasha’s stomach. “What did she say to you?” she asked.

Pierre’s face, already flushed, turned an even darker shade of pink. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m getting out of here now, that’s the main thing. But I need to know if you’re coming with me.”

It was tempting, but not as much as it was terrifying. There was something almost comfortable in certainty, even if it meant staying behind, and Natasha couldn’t pretend to have the guts to try to run.

“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t risk it.”

“What other choice do you have?”

“They’re gonna bring me back to Andrei eventually. Anatole said they wanted ransom money. I can wait them out.”

Pierre was silent for a minute or so. “Is there nothing I can say to convince you otherwise?”

“Can you tell me it’ll be safe?”

“It’ll probably be safer than staying here.”

“‘Probably’ isn’t enough,” she murmured.

“It’s all I can offer.”

“Then I’m staying,” she said finally. “But not forever. I just need some more time to figure out how to get out of here.”

Pierre shook his head. He didn’t look like he agreed, but something must have finally clicked, because all he had to say to that was, “I wish I could help you.”

Then he turned on his heel and left the way he had come.

* * *

 

It was peculiar how quickly the gang had taken to leaving the door to Natasha’s room unlocked. She wasn’t complaining, of course. The warmth was a welcome reprieve from their earlier arrangement, Pierre’s comments be damned.

Though they did seem to have taken up residence in the back of her head.

The more she thought about it, the more Natasha couldn’t help but feel that she had made a mistake. Pierre wasn’t a sensible person on the best of days, but maybe she wasn’t either, electing to stay with a group of criminals.

As inept as some of them may have appeared.

Hélène, for all her bravado, seemed capable of being genuinely nice, though the same couldn’t exactly be said for Fedya, and while Anatole hadn’t been particularly sensitive, neither did he seem smart enough to be truly malicious.

A finger was snapped in front of her eyes, startling her out of her thoughts.

“You still listening?”

Natasha blinked and shook her head. Around her, the room snapped back into focus, her other senses with it. “What?”

Anatole chuckled and reshuffled the deck of cards that he had laid out on the floor. “You’re gonna get fleeced if you lose focus during a game.”

“I’m getting fleeced anyways,” she grumbled. “You have all the buttons.”

She wasn’t exaggerating entirely. His little hoard was considerably more sizeable than hers, but probably wouldn’t have been quite as sizeable had he not insisted on popping off various buttons of his own clothing every time she won a round.

 _Cheating_ was what she called it. _Improvisation_ was his preferred term.

At least they hadn’t had enough money between them to gamble with anything other than buttons.

With deft fingers, he slotted the cards into a neat stack and began to dish them out again. “You wanna know how I do it?”

“Do I really?” she asked.

“It’s all in the tells,” he said blithely, as if her answer had been, in his mind, a resounding _yes, please_. “To win, you have to make your opponents lose.”

Natasha snorted. “Where did you find that little scrap of wisdom?”

“Doesn’t matter. Because it’s true.”

“What are your tells, then?”

Anatole smirked. He laid out the cards without even looking at them, like a man who was too well-practiced in this sort of thing. “Why should I tell you that?”

Natasha shrugged. “Not like I’m ever gonna get to use them against you.”

“Tell me what you think they are.”

Natasha frowned, considering him carefully. It wasn’t the hands—they were moving too fluidly to be anything but confidence. His face wasn’t particularly flushed, and the distinct un-crease of his brow didn’t betray any frustration. But there was something. There was always something. If she looked with her ears instead of her eyes, she could observe that his left foot had been tapping out an erratic, seemingly rhythmless beat ever since he had first suggested teaching her how to play blackjack.

“Your foot,” she said finally.

“A mislead. Draws the eyes. Distracts too.”

Natasha pursed her lips. “You twiddle your fingers whenever I get a good hand. And your eyelids flutter when you have a bad one.”

His smile widened a few inches. The tapping stopped. “Very good.”

If Pierre’s guilt hadn’t left her feeling triumphant, this sure as hell did the trick. Natasha straightened her back and tried not to let herself grin too smugly.

And then, because the rush of pride still hadn’t worn off and she was feeling a bit more cunning than normal, she asked, “What about the others? Do they have any tells?”

Anatole went back to dishing out the cards. “Fed’s got a good pokerface. Can’t get anything outta him. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“And Hélène?”

Anatole’s eyes narrowed in uncharacteristic suspicion. “Why?”

“Just curious.”

The suspicion, if it even was that, was short-lived. “Lena’s shit at cards,” he scoffed. “I think it’s the one thing she’s actually bad at. Used to drive Papa mental. He’s the one who taught me, but he flat-out gave up on her. No one else’ll play with me anymore. They say I’m a pain but I think they just got sick of losing.”

“And you’re so modest about it too,” Natasha said.

If he had heard the jab, he clearly elected to ignore it. “With as much free time as we’ve got, you need to pick up a hobby or two. Unless you enjoy peeling paint off the walls. And that gets old fast.”

Before Natasha could say anything in response to that, Hélène stuck her head through the door. Even though it was well into the night by now, she had re-done her lipstick, and if Natasha wasn’t mistaken she was wearing perfume.

“Hey, Lena,” Anatole said, not even bothering to spare a glance in her direction.

“You finally found someone to play cards with?”

Anatole shrugged, keeping his eyes on the cards. “She’s better than you.”

“Is he being an arrogant jackass again?” Hélène asked Natasha. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Pfft. Manages a half-decent game of cards and suddenly he thinks he’s some prodigy.”

Anatole gave her a crooked smile and held up a nine of clubs. “Wanna try me?”

“I’ll pass, thanks.”

Scowling, he tossed the card to his own deck, a little more forcefully than necessary. “Spoil my fun, would you?”

Hélène ruffled his hair. “Of course.”

“What do you want?”

“A few shots. I was wondering if you and Natasha would like some as well.”

Natasha froze. She thought of Pierre’s warning and the gun holstered at Fedya’s hip, and then the distance between herself and the nearest hallway. “A _what_?”

Hélène chuckled and leaned against the doorway. “A _drink_ , honey. The fun kind of shot.”

“Do you mean alcohol?”

Anatole gave Hélène a wry look.

“Yeah,” she said.

Natasha considered this for a moment. “Why?”

Hélène shrugged. “Just thought I’d be polite. One of the men suggested it.”

“I don’t drink.”

Hélène gave her an arch smile. “I thought you didn’t shoot guns either.”

Natasha glared at her. “I still don’t.”

“Look, you don’t have to. But I figured you must be bored. God knows we are too.” Natasha hesitated and Hélène grinned. “You don’t _have_ to drink. But would you care for some company?”

“I guess so.”

“Great. I’ll round ‘em up.”

“No more blackjack, I guess,” Anatole said out of the corner of his mouth. He began to sweep the cards back into his pocket and plopped himself down on the bed next to Natasha.

Presently, Hélène swept back through the door again, Fedya, Yuri, Ivan, and two other men she hadn’t met trailed at her heels.

“Have Denisov and Bezukhov decided not to join us?” asked the taller of the two men.

Hélène shrugged. “Denisov’s an early sleeper. Bezukhov’s probably sulking. He hasn’t pestered me all evening. I’m not complaining.”

“Do you _want_ to have to share good booze with Bezukhov?” said the shorter one.

Fedya chuckled. “Fair enough.”

It was an unusually laid-back response for a man who seemed the most at home when he had a gun in his hand. Come to think of it, Natasha realized, he looked much less intimidating now that Hélène was around. More relaxed somehow, more willing to fade into the background. If she took her eyes off him for a minute, he might just disappear into the peeling wallpaper.

Along with Ivan, who had seated himself on the corner with his arms wrapped around his legs and a miserable, lost look on his face, but that was another matter altogether.

“I think you ought to introduce yourselves,” Hélène said to the two men.

The shorter of the two turned to Natasha, offered her his hand, and said, “I’m Old Creepy.”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “ _The_ Old Creepy?”

Hélène chuckled and patted him on the back. His head hardly came up to her chin. “One and the same.”

“That’s only my professional name, though,” the man said. “You can call me Balaga.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t sure why, or even if it was a good idea, but she shook his hand. “What sort of a name is Balaga?”

Balaga chuckled and gave her a gap-toothed grin. “I didn’t say it was my name. I said it was what you can call me.”

“Please ignore him,” Anatole muttered.

“She hasn’t met you either, has she?” Hélène said to the taller man.

“Volkov,” he said.

“That’s his professional _and_ personal name,” Balaga slurred. His breath smelled of something strong and disgusting and eye-watering. Natasha realized that he was probably already drunk.

“Why do you want people to call you Old Creepy?” she asked, turning back to him

“Eh, I think it suits him,” said Volkov.

Balaga waved a hand animatedly, trailing the torn hem of his sleeve as he did. “You don’t choose your professional name. S’gotta be given to you.”

“It’s completely stupid,” Hélène said.

“Arbitrary too,” Anatole huffed. “After how many people I’ve worked with and I don’t even get one? Bullshit, that’s what it is.”

Fedya raised an amused eyebrow. “Who else’ve you worked with?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Why would you want one, Tolya?” Hélène said. “They’re embarrassing _._ ”

“Not all of ‘em.”

“I like some of them,” Natasha said, with a few shades more bravery than she really felt. “Like the Blonde Tigress.”

Fedya chuckled and bumped Hélène’s shoulder. “That’ll be you in a few years, Lena.”

“‘Blonde’?” Anatole said bemusedly.

Balaga drew a large battered flask from his jacket pocket. He gave it a firm shake, and Natasha heard liquid sloshing around. “Enough jabbering. Let’s get to drinking.”

“What’d you bring this time?” Volkov asked.

“Moonshine,” Balaga said, holding up his flask, and handed it to Hélène. “Home-brewed.”

“Is there any other kind?” Fedya said drily.

“Careful, Tasha,” said Anatole. “That stuff’s deadly.”

Hélène rolled her eyes as she unstoppered the flask. “Don’t listen to him. He’s just a big baby who can’t hold his booze.”

She grimaced as she took a swig, and then passed the flask to Fedya.

“Take another drink, Lena,” Volkov said. “God knows you could use it.”

“God knows we could all use it,” said Anatole.

Hélène rolled her eyes at him, took the flask, and threw back another shot. Her face went red and her eyes began to water.

“Shit, that burns,” she wheezed, beating her palm against her chest. “Jesus, Balaga, this tastes like paint thinner.”

“You know what paint thinner tastes like?” Anatole said under his breath.

“‘Cause it’s the good stuff. Strong,” said Balaga. “Took me days to distill it.”

“My favorite,” Fedya said drily.

Hélène wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Toto, you want some?”

“Gimme,” Anatole said, reaching for the flask. “God, it’s been so long.”

“Jesus, kid, don’t take all of it.”

“Shush. I just want to be drunk.”

“Knowing you, you’re already drunk,” Fedya said.

“Lightweights, the both of them,” said Yuri, nodding in agreement.

“Watch your mouth.”

Anatole giggled. Hélène scowled.

“I’m not a goddamn lightweight, you jackass. See?” she said.

She went for another shot, but Fedya wrested the flask away from her and took one himself. “Let’s pass this along.”

“Give it here again,” Anatole said.

“You’ve already had a turn,” said Hélène.

“I only got one shot last time.”

“Well, boo-hoo. I don’t give a fuck.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Fedya muttered.

Yuri shot Volkov an irritated look. Ivan shrank back into the corner, as if he were hoping for the walls to close in on him. It was nice, Natasha thought, not to look like the most desperately uncomfortable person in the room for once.

“Our boss,” Yuri said flatly.

“Don’t be so cold,” said Volkov. “No reason for any of us to be sober, eh?”

Yuri stood. “I’m leaving.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just stay, Yuri,” Hélène snapped. “Don’t kill the mood. We’re having fun, aren’t we?”

“I don’t think this one is,” he said, gesturing to poor Ivan. “And I’m not either.”

“Fine. Go then.”

Yuri gave her a dry smile and dusted off his trousers. “Yes, ma’am.”

Anatole frowned, and Natasha realized he had been closed-off ever since Yuri and Volkov had stepped into the room.

“Watch your tone, Boyko,” Hélène snapped.

“What are you gonna do?” Yuri said. “Sic Dolokhov on me? Shoot me?”

“Don’t want to end up a second Boris, pal. Might as well just do what she says,” said Volkov.

“Fuck this,” Yuri muttered. “Waste of time. C’mon, Ivan.”

Ivan startled at the sound of his name. “Huh?”

“Party’s over, kid. Let’s go.”j

“He can stay if he’d like,” said Anatole.

“It’s fine,” Ivan muttered. “‘M tired anyways.”

And then the two of them left, slamming the door shut behind them with a bang so loud that it shook a cloud of sawdust from the ceiling.

“Christ, I hate Yuri,” Hélène muttered.

Volkov’s eyebrow arched up. “Why’d you hire him if he bothers you so much?”

“Good with a gun. Can drive a car. ‘S pretty much all we needed.”

“But you don’t trust him.”

“I don’t like him either,” Fedya said. “Something off about him.”

“Seconded,” Anatole groused.

 “But he’s good muscle,” Hélène finished. “God knows we can’t just keep pecking off the bottom rungs of the totem pole. There’ll be nothing left to hold us up.”

“He’s fine,” Volkov said. “Quiet guy. Just don’t turn your back on him for too long.”

“What, are you afraid he’ll start filching the cigs or something?” said Hélène. “I’ve got it under control.”

“No, he’s right, Lena,” Fedya said. “Should consider whether we still want him when we have a second to catch our breath.”

“I still don’t like him,” murmured Anatole.

Natasha couldn’t help but agree.

Hélène sighed irritably and took another gulp of moonshine. “Is it really too much to ask that we have one night where we don’t talk about all of this?”

“Evidently,” said Anatole.

“Alright, we don’t have to talk about it,” Fedya said to her. “C’mere.”

Hélène beamed at him and snuggled into his side, swinging her legs over his lap. Fedya wrapped an arm around her shoulders and leaned back against the wall. For a moment, they almost looked like the happy young couple she thought she had met at the bank.

“This is nice,” Hélène mumbled. “All we need is more booze.”

“You’ll have to make do with what we’ve got.”

Hélène pouted. “You’re no fun when you’re being practical.”

Fedya chuckled and kissed the tip of her nose. “Sorry, doll.”

“Hmm, I like when you call me that.”

“Oh, you do, do you?”

Anatole wrinkled his nose. He caught Natasha’s eye and mimed gagging. Natasha giggled, despite herself, burying her laugh in her sleeve.

“Mhm,” Hélène hummed. “Keep going.”

Fedya seemed perfectly happy to do just that.

“What else do you like?” he murmured, winding a lock of her hair between two fingers. Natasha realized that he too was drunk now, and she had yet to decide whether it was more amusing than it was surprising to see him so at ease.

“Could you two get a room?” Anatole said.

Balaga let out a throaty chuckle and took back the flask.

Grinning, Hélène turned and whispered something in Fedya’s ear that made his face grow dark and flustered, and one of her hands crept across his chest and disappeared down the front of his shirt.

“Ah, shit—Lena—” Fedya said. He pried away her wrist. “Okay, sweetheart, not now.”

“Shameless,” Anatole groused.

Hélène and Fedya turned, almost in perfect synchronization, with matching looks of irritation.

“Are we bothering you, Toto?” Hélène said innocently.

“You two’re acting like teenagers.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Volkov said. “The thrill of young love.”

“Like you’d know,” said Fedya.

Volkov laughed amicably. “Got me there, Dolokhov.”

Natasha bristled at his smile. Anatole, at her side, followed suit.

“I need another drink,” he said darkly. A moment later, the flask was out of Balaga’s hands again, and he grappled for it pathetically before Anatole managed to pry it away. “Tasha, do you want one?”

“I’m alright,” she said, and pushed the flask back into his hands when he offered it to her

“You should have some,” Fedya said.

“I don’t like the look of it. And it’s illegal.”

Hélène, Fedya, Anatole, and Balaga shared a darkly comedic look.

“Illegal, sweetheart?” Hélène said. “This”—she gestured to the bottle—“is the least illegal thing we’ve gotten up to all week. You helped us rob a store. Now have a goddamn drink. You’ve earned it.”

Natasha considered the flask. It smelled strong, even from here, almost enough to make her eyes water. “What does it taste like?”   

“Like fire and gasoline,” said Anatole. “But it’ll make you feel happier.”

“How?”

“No need to question it,” Fedya said. “If you’re gonna drink, drink.”

 _Fair_ , she thought, and raised the flask to her lips.

Natasha’s eyes widened involuntarily as the moonshine shot down her throat like a burning fireball. “Christ,” she said, coughing on her own breath.

Hélène giggled and leaned against Fedya. “It’s not as bad if you have some water right after,” he said. “And breathe in before you take the shot.”

Hélène bumped his shoulder. “Look at you, being sweet.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Never took you for a teddy bear, Fed,” Balaga said, as pensively as he could manage with half a bottle of moonshine in him. “Guess it’s in the name, though.”

Fedya looked amused rather than offended. He may just as well have been, knowing these people. Natasha wouldn’t have been surprised if insulting each other was a sort of entertainment for them.

Evidently, it was, because he quickly shot back with: “My mother was aspirational,” he said. “Not as bad as Hélène and Tolya, with the matching names.”

“I don’t think it suits him anyways,” Hélène chimed in. “Bears are fierce. And large.”

“Watch it, you.”

Hélène snickered and kissed his cheek. “Could be worse. Anatole’s name means ‘sunrise’, and no one’s calling him bright.”

“Hey!” Anatole said, pointing one trembling finger in her direction. “You take that back. I won’t stand to be insulted like this.” But he overshot his aim, and instead of looking threatening as he probably intended, he wobbled too far sideways and landed on the pillows with a heavy _oof_.

The others laughed.

“Is he alright?” Natasha whispered.

“Drunk as a skunk,” said Fedya. “I wouldn’t want to be him in the morning.”

Anatole groaned and struggled to sit upright. He didn’t get very far before falling over again.

“You’re gonna slide off the bed, idiot,” Natasha said, reaching for his arm. “C’mere.”

Hélène snickered. “Oh, this is cute. This is very cute.”

“Shut up,” Anatole muttered.

“Better not leave them alone, Lenka,” Fedya chimed in. “What with the way they’re looking at each other.”

Hélène leaned over to Natasha with a conspiratorial grin. “Careful, Tasha. He thinks he’s slick when he’s smashed.”

“Should I just leave?” Anatole snapped, still horizontal.

“That depends,” Volkov said. “Can you even walk?”

Natasha snorted into her sleeve. Anatole huffed and pulled his feet up onto the mattress. “They’re so rude to me, Tasha,” he muttered.

“You poor thing.”

“Enough of that. I propose a toast to a job well done,” Hélène said, lifting the flask. “You all did me proud.”

Fedya smiled and gave a mock-bow.

Anatole rubbed his cheek as if in remembrance. “To that amazing slap. And Tasha’s future career in the theatre.”

Natasha giggled and put a hand on his shoulder before he could topple onto the floor.

“You did really well,” Hélène said seriously. She reached over to squeeze Natasha’s knee. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Probably not,” said Fedya. “You can’t do the young and doe-eyed schtick anymore, Lena.”

Hélène glared at him. “Do you mind?”

“Not one bit.”

She slapped his shoulder. “You can be such an ass when you’re drunk.”

“Doesn’t take getting him drunk for that,” said Anatole.

“I’m not being an ass. I’m just stating a fact.”

“You should let this go, Dolokhov,” Volkov said. “No sense in pissing off your girl.”

“Watch it, you,” Hélène snapped.

He shrugged and downed another mouthful of moonshine.

“I haven’t said anything wrong,” Fedya said. “She’s even younger than Tolya. Of course she looks sweeter than you.”

Anatole and Natasha exchanged a quick bemused look.

“You’re unbelievable,” Hélène said.

“No, Lena, you know that’s not what I meant,” said Fedya. “Come on, you’re acting crazy.”

At that, Hélène stood up and stalked through the door and slammed it shut behind her, even louder than Yuri had.

“ _Shit_ ,” Fedya muttered. He leapt to his feet and sprinted after her.

Anatole let out a low whistle. “Well, then.”

Volkov shot Balaga a sidelong glance. “Think that’s our cue to leave too.”

“Good call.”

“Night, night, Toto,” Volkov said. “Sweet dreams.”

Anatole gave him a dark look. “Fuck off.”

Natasha gaped. Balaga’s eyebrows shot up. But Volkov looked more amused than insulted.

“Twitchy thing, aren’t you? Didn’t mean to offend. My sincerest apologies.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Anatole said. “Whatever.”

Volkov chuckled and shot Natasha a sidelong wink. Smile still in place, he wrapped an arm around Balaga’s shoulders and the two of them left, and for the first time that evening, the door was closed quietly.

“Why are they leaving?” Natasha asked.

“Don’t wanna deal w’Lena when she’s pissy,” Anatole said into the pillow he had tucked beneath his cheek. “She’s gonna be in a shit mood now. If she decides to come back.”

Natasha couldn’t help the nervous giggle that bubbled out of her. Anatole stared at her in confusion and then began to laugh too.

“It’s not funny,” she said, gasping for air.

“No,” he said, wiping at his eyes, “not funny at all.”

“Oh my God, Anatole, you’re _drunk_.”

Anatole, at that, began to howl and collapsed against the headboard, but he landed at a funny angle and ended up slapping his head against the wall. He shot back upright, rubbing the back of his neck, and Natasha giggled even harder.

“Shh,” he said finally. “‘M _fine_.”

“You’re so silly,” she chuckled. “Silly, silly, silly.”

“So are you,” he grumbled.

“‘M not silly.”

“No, drunk.”

Natasha ran her fingers through his hair, absently playing with it. He didn’t seem to mind. “I’ve never been drunk before. I think I like it. I feel sort of warm and fuzzy. I-is that why you were so giddy?”

Anatole sighed contentedly and leaned into her touch with his eyes closed. “Probably.”

“You have very odd hair,” she said idly.

Anatole hummed in response.

“Dryusha’s’s really curly. But it isn’t as shiny as yours. Pretty.”

That earned her a lazy, vague smile.

“Pretty, pretty Anatole.”

“You’re pretty too,” he said, opening his eyes. “Fuck, just look at you.”

The rest of that sentence trailed off in another giggle, and his eyes drifted shut.

“Your sister’s pretty,” Natasha murmured. “Really, really pretty. But you’re funnier than she is. Nicer too. And you’re really good at blackjack.”

“Mmm. Thanks.”

“Even though you’re still missing buttons.”

“Oh, shhh.”

She laughed and and leaned forwards, almost to his forehead, before righting herself again. “Pretty Anatole. Pretty Hélène. Pretty family. Even if you cheat at blackjack.”

Eyes still closed, Anatole’s chest began to shake with laughter.

“Andrei’s not like you at all. Doesn’t play cards. Doesn’t laugh as much. He’s always worrying.” She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t think you worry about a single thing.”

Anatole mumbled something sleepy and incoherent. Natasha sighed.

“Well, I suppose there are worse ways to be.”

Anatole had nothing to say to that. He mustn’t have had the energy anymore. But Natasha didn’t mind. Talking to thin air was comfort enough.

“He gives amazing hugs. He hugs you like you’re the most precious thing in the world. I miss that. I miss it a lot. You’d be no good at hugs, you twig. Too skinny.”

Anatole let out a loud snore, and Natasha startled and almost leapt clean off the mattress.

“Of course you’re asleep,” she said, shaking her head. “They were right, you know. You really are a lightweight.”

She was too, probably. Her own eyelids had become impossibly heavy. A yawn was threatening to work its way out of her, and every time she blinked, her ears filled with a dull, broad fuzz, as if her head had been stuffed with cotton balls.

“You hogged the pillow,” she mumbled. “How am I supposed to sleep?”

She pushed at his shoulder, but Anatole only let out a quiet, sleepy sigh, and she relented, against her better judgment. What was the harm in it? He was drunk, as Fedya had said, and asleep to boot.

Natasha wrinkled her nose as she leaned against him. “Your shoulder’s too bony.” She squirmed down the bed and rested her head on his chest. “But you’re nice’n warm.”

The door creaked softly as Fedya and Hélène slipped back into the room, holding hands and smiling, apparently having recovered from their earlier spat.

“Oh, isn’t this sweet?” said Hélène. “Look how cute they are, Fed.”

Natasha’s head shot up. She hadn’t heard their footsteps coming down the hallway. She hadn’t heard much at all, in fact. Around her, the room seemed to have grown dim and slightly blurred, and drowsiness had muffled her ears. But now everything had snapped back into clarity. “Oh,” she said, slightly crestfallen but unsure why. “You’re back.”

“Is he asleep?”

She felt Anatole’s chest rising and falling gently beneath her palm. The sheets had rucked up around her hip, and as she straightened her back, the mattress springs groaned.

“Yeah, I think so.”

Hélène crouched and began to jiggle his shoulder. “Tolya? Tolya?” She shook her head. “Out cold. I knew it. He can’t hold his liquor at all.”

Fedya laughed and kissed her temple. “He takes after his sister.”

Hélène yawned and stretched her arms over her head. For once, she didn’t argue back. “Well, he’s got the right idea. We should get some sleep too.”

Natasha shifted awkwardly, afraid of dislodging Anatole or worse, waking him up.

“Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart,” Hélène said, seemingly having caught on to her train of thought. “Plop him onto the mattress. He’s drunk as a skunk. You could shove him out the back of the car and he wouldn’t wake up.”

Natasha ducked her head, blushing furiously, and laid Anatole down against the pillow. Hélène snickered.

“Leave the girl alone, Lena,” Fedya said.

“Aw, pet, I’m only having a little fun. It’s no harm. Right, Tasha?”

“Come on, you,” Fedya said. “Let’s get to bed.”

She heard Hélène’s musical laugh and clothes rustling and floorboards creaking. “Eager, are we?”

“Always for you.”

Another laugh, but the both of them this time.

They were sort of cute, she thought. A radical departure from the couple she had seen at the bank, but cute nevertheless, in their own weird, vaguely intimidating way.

The door creaked softly as it closed. Natasha gave a content sigh. Her eyes began to drift shut again, and her ears filled with that same cottony sound, and the mattress squeaked again but she hardly noticed it, until the night faded into a hazy, softly-lit blur.


	10. The Abduction, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Anatole find themselves in a predicament.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The authors are incredibly sad that Comet closed on main tonight. 
> 
> This show means so much to us and has been a source of pretty much endless joy. We can't think of a better way to commemorate its closing than to finally update one of our fics.
> 
> Also please be aware that this chapter has some scary stuff in it/ mentions of death

It wasn’t the first time Anatole had woken up this hungover and disoriented, but he couldn’t say he’d ever come to tied down to a kitchen chair.

Or in such bad shape. His limbs were dead. His fingers and toes were numb. His stomach cramped with hunger. His tongue was dry as sandpaper. And worse of all, circling through his head with all the awful incessant repetition of a woodpecker hammering away at a telephone pole, was a voice saying, “I’m dead. Oh, God, I’m dying. I’ve died and gone to hell. Oh, God.”

Anatole squeezed his eyes shut, trying to dislodge the irritating voice as he mentally rifled through what he could recollect of the previous night. He remembered drinking with the group, then, less clearly, drinking with Natasha, and from that point on the memories became too blurry to piece together.

So perhaps that was how they had wound up in a different room. But that still didn’t explain the chair or why it felt like someone had tied him around the middle with a spool of chicken wire.

A tug at his arm, and that limb refused to give.

 _Well, that’s odd_ , he thought. His wrists were tied as well. Ankles were a crapshoot—all he could feel in his legs was pins-and-needles.

“Anatole!” the voice shrieked.

Anatole blinked the rheum from his eyes. His vision hadn’t quite cleared yet but he could see that there was a flickering light overhead, and each switch came with a dull throbbing pain that shot through his temples.

“Ouch,” he managed to say.

Then the ground shifted abruptly beneath him, and the world began to spin topsy-turvy around his head like an awful drunken merry-go-round.

“Oh my God, I thought you were dead!” said the voice.

Anatole’s head snapped upright at that. It only made the spinning worse. “Wassat?”

“You weren’t moving,” the voice said, weepy now. “I—y-you weren’t even snoring. My godmother always said if you drink too much you’ll wake up dead and I thought—”

“What?”

“But you’re not dead!”

Finally, the spinning began to slow enough for him to see. Natasha was tied down to the chair next to him, still wearing what he recognized as one of Hélène’s least favorite dresses. Her face was streaked with tears, and her eyes were puffy and bloodshot.

“I think I’m dying,” she sniffled.

Anatole turned to her with a dumbfounded expression.

“I can feel my heart beating in m-my forehead. And my stomach hurts.”

“You’re just hungover,” he said, in a voice that tasted of dust. “‘S normal.”

Natasha writhed a little and almost upended her seat. “ _This_ isn’t normal!”

“Well, I mean, you’re right.”

“I can’t believe you’re joking about this.”

“I’m not—oh, nevermind. What do you remember?” he asked.

“Men,” she whispered. “They came into the room while you were asleep. I tried to yell, but you didn’t wake up.” And then, almost angrily: “You managed to _sleep_ through the whole goddamn thing!”

“Can you describe them?”

“Ugly.”

Anatole made a flat, bitter sound in the back of his throat. “Gonna have to be a bit more specific.”

“They—I think they were the ones we were drinking with last night. I can’t remember their names.”

“Shit,” Anatole muttered. “Tall blond?”

“One of them.”

“Tasha, do you know where we are?” he said.

“I don’t _know,_ ” she said. “I would’ve told you if I knew.”

Anatole craned his neck for a better look. He almost wished he hadn’t bothered a moment later, because his stomach began to churn with a horribly hungover mix of nausea and dread.

It was the pantry. Oh, goddammit. Of all places, it had to be the pantry.

“No one’s gonna be able to hear us in here,” he said hoarsely.

Natasha’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s soundproof. Lena made sure of that.”

“ _Why_?” Natasha cried.

“I don’t fucking know!” he snapped. “I guess she likes her privacy. It isn’t as if she consulted me beforehand.”

“Who does that? Who the hell soundproofs a room? Why can’t you people behave normally for one day?”

“Does that _matter_ right now?”

Natasha gave another furious kick. He realized dimly that she had only been tied around the middle, leaving her hands and feet free. “Yes it does! It was only you they wanted. This is your fault. If you hadn’t gotten so goddamn smashed and fallen asleep—”

“This isn’t my fault. How the hell was I supposed to know this would happen?”

“Your fault for falling asleep on me. They could’ve just left me alone. So it’s your fault.”

“No one _asked_ you to stay.”

“You’re keeping me prisoner! What choice did I have?”

“Oh, for God’s—”

The door creaked open. Anatole and Natasha went still and silent.

Yuri and Volkov looked like they had had a better night’s sleep than either of them, though that wasn’t saying much. Volkov was at least slightly hungover, judging by his gait and the tired lines of his face. Anatole smelled coffee on him, and gasoline and smoke.

“Well, if it isn’t our two favorite sleepyheads,” said Yuri.

 _Oh, dear fucking God_.

“I must say, it’s a little odd to see you up so bright and early.”

Anatole groaned as his eyes smarted. “Can’t say I disagree.”

Volkov shook his head in disapproval and stepped around the back of the chair. Anatole tried turning his head to see what he was doing, but the crick in his neck wouldn’t let him twist far enough. There came a sharp tug, and the ropes went even tighter, squeezing the air from his lungs.

“Fucking hell, Boyko, can’t even tie a proper knot?” said Volkov.

“I’m not sure why you’re surprised. S’what you get when you work with a man who struggles to tie his shoelaces,” Anatole said insolently.

That earned him a slap upside the head and a sharp, “Shut it, Kuragin.”

Like hell was he going to comply with that.

“You’re really gonna stand there and let him talk shit about you, aren’t you, Yuri?” he said, his head still ringing from the blow. “You know, I took you for a guy with a spine. I guess I was wrong.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Natasha hissed.

“I love this,” Yuri said to Volkov. “I always forget what a little spitfire he can be.”

Volkov went back to the door and poked his head into the hallway. The gun at his hip glistened black and silver.

Anatole tugged at his wrists again. The ropes hardly budged. If he wasn’t untied soon, his hands were going to go dead. “Why’d I get the special treatment?” he asked. “You let her off easy. Are you that fond of me?”

“Can’t have you slipping away on us, Tolenka,” said Yuri. He pulled another chair away from the wall and seated himself so that he was facing Anatole and Natasha with his back to the door. “Not after all the effort we put in.”

At _effort_ , Volkov scoffed dismissively, but didn’t have anything more to say to that.

“I’m flattered,” said Anatole. “Though you could at least have the decency to buy me dinner first.”

Natasha shot Anatole an incredulous, horrified glare.

But Yuri’s smile was all teeth and snake venom, as if the two of them had just shared an inside joke. He laid one hand on the nape of Anatole’s neck and said, “Forward little thing, aren’t you?”

His mouth was running of its own accord now. “What can I say? I am what I am.”

“Please, for the love of God, stop talking,” Natasha whispered.

Anatole decided to ignore that. Talking was what he was best at, and bantering was easier than arguing. So long as he had Yuri’s attention, he had some control, however flimsy it may have been.

“He’s always so chatty, this one,” Yuri said to Natasha. “All that ever comes out of him is hot air. Drives me up the wall sometimes. You know what I mean? I think the sister got all the brains in this family, and even that’s not saying much.”

Natasha pressed her lips into a thin line. She didn’t look like she disagreed with him entirely.

Anatole shrugged his shoulders and tried leaning back in his seat, but Yuri’s hand remained firmly in place. Without missing a beat, he responded, “Good thing I got all the looks then, isn’t it?”

Yuri chuckled. “Cute. Isn’t he, sweetheart? Always such a hit with marks.”

Natasha’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

“Weird as hell that Hélène kept that going,” Volkov muttered. “She always hated when Vasily made her do it.”

“If it works, it works.” Yuri’s eyes darted to the ring on Natasha’s finger. “And I think it works.”

Anatole’s jaw went stiff.

“You can’t blame them for liking him,” he continued. “He’s a fantastic actor when he wants to be, aren’t you, Tolya?”

“I think you’re being a bit generous there,” said Anatole.

“He’s right,” Volkov said. “Hélène’s the actor.”

Yuri looked back to Natasha and ruffled Anatole’s hair. “Their daddy taught them to do it, you know? They’ve gotten pretty good at it. Him especially.”

Natasha frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Get your filthy paws offa me,” Anatole snapped.

“And so easily-offended too! You’d expect a bit more from a Kuragin, wouldn’t you think?” Yuri said, still talking to Natasha.

“I don’t know,” Natasha whispered.

“Touch me again and I’ll bite, I swear, I’ll do it,” said Anatole.

Yuri pinched his cheek. “Now, _there’s_ the Kuragin in him. Just as scrappy as his big sister.”

Anatole would have followed through on his threat had he not frozen at the mention of Hélène. “Where is she?”

This must have been what Yuri had wanted to hear. “No need to worry your pretty little head about that. She’ll be here soon enough.”

“The combination for the safe is eighteen eighty-two,” Anatole said. “The keys are by the front door. You can be on your way without anymore trouble.”

Yuri shrugged. “Still wanna get something out of this. Whatever Lenochka’s scraped together isn’t worth our time.”

“Then what do you want? I swear, there’s nothing else.”

“Lena’s always been protective of you. Overprotective, in fact.”

Dread sank into his gut like a punch. He thought of the pantry walls, heavily-lined and silent, and realized that he and Natasha were truly, deeply, and utterly screwed.

“She’s not going to tell you anything I haven’t,” he said shakily.

“And I believe you.” Yuri said. “But she’d give anything to protect you. Wouldn’t she, Tolenka?”

Anatole’s heart thundered in his ears. Natasha looked more confused than frightened.

“Your old man pissed a lot of folks off,” he continued. “Don’t you think some of them would like to have the chance to take it up with his kid?”

Anatole shook his head hurriedly. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, pal. None of them even know who I am. He made sure of that.”

“But they know your sister.”

The blood drained from Anatole’s face. “Let me the hell go. Right now. Untie me, let me—”

And then Volkov grabbed him by the jaw and stuffed a filthy old rag in his mouth, and the rest of his shout caught off in a muffled non-syllable. It tasted of grease and God-only-knew-what-else. Anatole tried to spit it out, but Volkov tied it in place and said, “Should keep him quiet.”

Anatole made a furious noise into the gag.

“We’re using our indoor voices today, Tolenka.” Yuri said, tipping Anatole’s chin up. Then, to Natasha, he said, “Much more pleasant when he’s quiet, isn’t he? Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

Natasha let out a nervous laugh, and that, out of everything that had happened, offended Anatole the most.

“I’m glad you agree,” Yuri said, smiling.

“Could you take this seriously?” Volkov snapped.

“I am. What else do you want me to do right now?”

Volkov glared at him and crossed his arms. Yuri let out a dry laugh.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“I just want to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”

“What else is there? Denisov’s asleep, Balaga’s still drunk, and Lenochka and Dolokhov are gonna be passed out for at least another two hours.”

At the mention of Hélène, Anatole’s head shot up frantically.

“We still have to figure out what to do with the bodies,” Volkov muttered.

Yuri shrugged. “Could just leave them here.”

Again, Anatole tried to shout, but the only noise that he managed to make was muffled and senseless.

“Suppose,” Volkov said. “‘S a damn shame. Dolokhov’s a decent shot.”

“Yeah, but he’s a lost cause. Too wrapped around her little finger.”

He gestured to Natasha. “And what about her?”

“Who? The girl?”

“You could ransom me,” Natasha said quickly. “My husband is a sheriff, you know. He’d pay anything to get me home safe.”

Volkov turned to Yuri and shrugged. “That’s an option.”

“It’s the easiest option,” she continued. “You don’t even have to waste a single bullet.”

“Clever girl,” said Yuri. “I like the way you think.”

Anatole bristled like a cat that had been brushed the wrong way and tried to shout, _But what about me?_

Volkov nodded. “Us and the two ladies. That’s manageable.”

“Would you lighten up now? Everyone’s accounted for.”

“It still might not work. Someone stole one of the cars.”

“Well, if there’s not enough room in the backseat, we’ll just shove Ivan out.”

Volkov actually cracked a smile at that. “Always you with the bright ideas.”                     

Yuri grinned and punched his shoulder. “‘S why you keep me around.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, come help me load up the car.”

“Behave yourselves,” Yuri said, chucking Anatole’s chin. “We won’t keep you waiting too long.”

When the door closed behind them, Natasha let out a ragged sigh and sagged back against the chair. Anatole didn’t dare look in her direction. For once, he couldn’t find it in him to even pretend to be confident.

“Anatole?” Natasha whispered.

Anatole turned to face her and let out a muffled noise through the gag. _Help me_ , he tried to say.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I wish I could help you. But I can’t understand a thing you’re saying.”

* * *

 

It was nearing sunrise by the time Pierre spotted the post office on the horizon.

The ride had taken almost two hours. He had seen houses within half an hour, but he hadn’t dared stop until he was almost out of gas and as far away from Hélène as humanly possible.

Bullets, as he had come to learn with her, were terrifyingly effective as a long-range weapon.

Clumsily, with an awful screech, the car swerved to a halt. There wasn’t enough strength in him for a sigh of relief. Not enough breath either. Legs still aching from the hard fold of the driver’s seat, he disembarked and started up the front steps, kicking up clouds of dust and dirt that clung to his trouser legs as he went. If nobody answered him here, he would walk, run, crawl, whatever it took till the next sign of civilization.

More specifically, to the nearest telephone booth.

But there was a light on in the window, which boded well. The teller at the front desk startled at the creak of the door, as if Pierre had caught him in mid-nap. Given the hour, he supposed he probably had.

“Can I use your telephone?” he asked.

The teller blinked, not quite fully away. “Huh?”

“Can I use your telephone? It’s urgent.”

“It’s one in the morning,” he said, running a hand down his tired face.

Pierre wiped his palms on the thighs of his trousers. He really should have chosen something a bit more seasonally-appropriate to wear. But it was too late to worry about that now. “I know. It’s urgent.”

“Who’s going to be awake to hear it?”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t take long.”

The teller ran one hand through his already-disheveled hair and pointed down the hallway. “Alright. Phone’s that way.”

Pierre straightened his shirt and nodded. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said the teller. “Hang it up when you’re done.”

“Of course.”

Pierre hurried down the hall. From behind him, there came a gentle thud as the teller kicked his feet up on the counter.

At the bend of the corridor past the collection box there was a busted-up water fountain and a telephone box that seemed to be hanging to the wall with a handful of loose screws, spit, and prayers. With shaking hands, Pierre dialed zero and pressed the handset to his ear. It gave a few tinny rings.

Finally someone answered on the other line.

Pierre swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, “Operator? This is Pierre Bezukhov. I need you to connect me to Sheriff Andrei Bolkonsky.”


	11. The Altercation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hélène has an unpleasant realization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'd like to apologize for the long delay! We have a few v fun lil projects that are sucking up our time, and we are both but humble students. 
> 
> Please be advised that this chapter has some minor NSFW-ish stuff, as well as threats of gun violence.

Hélène Kuragina decidedly did not enjoy hangovers nearly as much as being drunk.

The warm buzz and eased nerves had been enjoyable enough last night, but the headache and the nausea and the awful clammy feel of her skin that almost inevitably followed were almost enough to make her wonder if it was worth it. That, of course, didn’t mean that she would stop anytime soon.

It just gave her free license to complain.

Fedya lay beside her, still asleep, radiating heat like a coal stove. She kicked the sheets off and stared at the ceiling and the cracks in the white paint, until her eyes drifted over to the window and the warm yellow sunlight streaming in. The clock on her wall currently read as a few minutes past eleven in the morning. She hadn’t slept in this late for a long time. But then again, she probably hadn’t been this hungover in a long time either.

“Fedya,” she said, poking his shoulder. “Fedya, wake up.”

Fedya grumbled and turned over so that his back was facing her. She poked him again, a little harder this time, and tugged at the collar of his shirt, which earned her another indistinct grunt.

“I know you’re not really asleep,” she said.

“Christ above, woman, what do you _want_?”

Hélène wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face to the nape of his neck. “My head hurts, Fyedka.”

“No shit. That’s what you get when you decide to get smashed.”

Hélène kissed his neck. “Fix it for me?”

“Leave me alone.”

She pouted, but she didn’t draw away. That would have been tantamount to an admission of defeat. “You can’t be mean to me. I’m hungover.”

“I’m hungover too.”

“And look how sweet I’m being.”

He snorted. “That’s one word for it.”

“Look at that smile,” she cooed, gently tugging at his beard. “It’s so much prettier than your frown.”

Fedya rolled over so that he was facing her and gave her a begrudging grin. “Alright, you have my attention. What do you want?”

“To go back to sleep.” She snuggled in against his chest. “You’re so cozy.”

Fedya squeezed his eyes shut and sighed with a dead look on his face. “You woke me up so we could go to sleep again?”

Hélène nodded and kissed his chin. “I was cold without you, Fyedka. I missed you.”

Fedya wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. “You really are impossible, you know.”

Hélène let out a sleepy sigh, seemingly in agreement, and relaxed in his arms.

“We never sleep in anymore,” he murmured.

She shrugged. “Places to be, jobs to do.”

“What if there wasn’t anywhere we had to be?”

Hélène rolled her eyes with a teasing smile. “Christ. Not the fucking cottage again.”

“We’ll set you up with a chair out in the back. You can sit out there with a book when it’s sunny, and if it’s too hot, we’ll set up an awning.”

“Don’t tell me you’re getting domestic on me.”

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t love it.”

Unsure of what to make of that last sentence, she tipped her head back against his shoulder. “But what is there to _do_? After I’ve finished sitting out back, I mean.”

“Dunno. We’d start taking things slow. I’d find some odd jobs, and you’d look after the house.”

“Are you sure you didn’t read this in some trashy novel?”

“I’ve told you a million times, it’s real.”

“Mm-hm,” she murmured. “I’m sure it is, sweetheart.”

“What do I have to do to make you take me seriously?”

Hélène rolled her eyes and tilted her head up to kiss him. “Let’s not talk about this right now. I want to go back to sleep.”

“What if I don’t want to sleep?”

“Why not?”

Fedya idly toyed with a strand of her hair. “Well, I’m awake now, and I’m not tired anymore. And since you’re the one who woke me up, I think you should make it up to me.”

Hélène gave him a wry smirk. “Oh?”

Fedya kissed her temple, allowing his hands to drift lower to her waist. “We could have some fun, you and I.”

“It’s about damn time.”

Fedya chuckled and grazed her pulse with his teeth. “Door’s locked?”

Was it? Had they locked it last night, when they had drunkenly stumbled down the hallway, leaning against the walls and each other for support?

That didn’t matter. It was closed, which was the main thing, and if anyone had the stupidity and gall to barge in, Fedya’s revolver was only a drawer away.

“Of course,” she replied, without missing a beat.

Fedya grinned and leaned over her. Hélène sank back against the pillows luxuriantly, almost laughing, and tugged at the hem of his shirt.

“You’re too dressed for this,” she said.

“Hush. Just let me take care of you.”

He went down, not up.

Hélène let out a shaky breath as his lips ghosted over her stomach. When he looked back up at her, there was a wicked gleam in his eyes and a slow, snakelike sweetness to his voice. “You like that?”

Hélène’s eyelids fluttered as she sighed. Tell him, she told herself. Do it. Three words. Easy as pie. Everything she had done, and now _this_ was what stumped her.

But before she could, Fedya chuckled and kissed her hipbone, and that line of thought trailed off with a delighted gasp. “Suppose that’s answer enough.”

His fingers has just started working at the straps of her brassiere when, from across the room, there came the loud, unmistakable sound of someone knocking at the door.

Hélène and Fedya froze in tandem, their eyes wide and confused. Nobody ever knocked at the door to Hélène’s bedroom when it was closed. She had threatened to fire no less than five men on separate occasions for even suggesting it. Firing, of course, making use of her gun.

Slowly, Fedya sat up.

Hélène grabbed him by the belt loops of his trousers. “Keep going,” she whined.

The knocking continued. And Fedya, much to her growing ire, seemed to have taken that as his cue to draw back.

“Don’t you dare stop, Fyodor Ivanovich,” she hissed.

“Hélène!” came the sound of Yuri’s voice.

Fedya shook his head and glanced at the door.

“Oh, goddammit, Yuri” she snapped at the ceiling. “What the fuck do you need now?”

“To talk to you.”

“I’m busy.”

“It can’t wait.”

“You should go,” Fedya whispered, tucking in the front of his shirt. “We’ll just pick up where we left off.”

Hélène considered this for a moment.

“I’ll make the wait worth your while,” he added.

Well. That wasn’t a half-bad offer.

“Stay put,” she said, more an order than a request. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Fedya pulled her down and kissed her soundly. “Go get ‘em, boss.”

Hélène had just pulled a slip over her shoulder when she felt a quick, sharp slap against her backside. She jumped and whipped around to glare at Fedya.

“Payback,” he said with a smug grin.

“You don’t make leaving easy.”

The hem of his shirt was riding up again. “I know. Think of it as a preview of what’s to come.”

Hélène’s fingers worked feverishly as she buttoned her collar. The quicker she got this over with, the quicker she could come back. When she stalked out of the room, she made a point of slamming the door shut behind her.

Volkov and Yuri looked as if they hadn’t slept nearly well as she had. If not for the dark circles under their eyes but the nervous rubbing of Volkov’s hands and the visibly stiffness of Yuri’s posture.

“Where’s Dolokhov?” Volkov asked.

“Why the fuck would I know?” she snapped. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s your brother.”

Hélène paused. “What about him? Is he alright?”

Volkov grimaced. “Ah…he’s not looking well.”

“He kept asking for you,” said Yuri, “but he’s a bit tied up at the minute. Too much to drink, I guess.”

Hélène was almost disappointed by how unsurprised she was. The last time Anatole had overshot his own alcohol tolerance, he had spent the next day leaning over a bucket and whining about headaches and sore throats and a list of other complaints longer than he was tall. And Fedya, having had no patience for that sort of thing, had promptly found some excuse to spend the entire day outside, servicing the cars.

“Oh, goddammit,” she said. “Where is he?”

“Pantry. Can’t stand quite well at the moment.”

Hélène sighed as she followed them down the hallway to the pantry. “I swear to God, if you idiots called me in here just because he’s hungov—”

Her voice froze, the rest of her with it, the moment she saw what was waiting through the doorway.

Anatole and Natasha had been tied down to kitchen chairs. Natasha hadn’t been gagged; Anatole had.

As soon as he saw her, Anatole’s eyes went wide. He tried to yell something into the gag, but Volkov laid a warning hand on the back of his neck and he fell silent.

Hélène realized, with a sinking sense of dread and an even greater tug of fury, that she hadn’t brought her gun.

“What the fuck is this?” she hissed.

“I’d probably call it a heads-up,” Yuri said lightly. “Or maybe a coup d’état.”

“I _beg_ your pardon.”

“We’re tired of your leadership,” Volkov said. “As of right now, it’s effectively over.”

Hélène laughed. Even to her own ears, it sounded hollow and brittle. “Have you gone batshit insane?”

Anatole whimpered and closed his eyes as Volkov rested the barrel of his gun against his temple. “This doesn’t have to end badly. But it can, very, very easily.”

Hélène’s heart began to batter madly against the inside of her ribcage, and with that, all her false bravado crumbled away.

“Don’t,” she said. “Not him.”

At that, Natasha stiffened in her seat with a small, confused squeak. Volkov and Yuri never did get to react, because a moment later, they heard Fedya’s oblivious voice drifting in from further down the hallway:

“I brought your robe and slippers, Lena. I know it’s kinda hot but the house is so damn drafty and if you get splinters—”

“Fedya!”

The robe and slippers dropped to the floor. Anatole made a panicked noise into the gag. It sounded vaguely like _Fe’ya_.

“What is this?” Fedya said.

“Never you mind, Dolokhov.”

Fedya yanked Hélène out of the way just as Yuri made a grab for her arm. The two of them froze, eyes locking as if sizing the other up.

“Give her to us, and we’ll let the boy go,” said Yuri.

Natasha squeaked again.

“Not gonna happen,” Fedya growled, gripping Hélène’s forearm tighter.

Hélène gulped. It went down dry and scratchy as sandpaper. “Alright. Let’s talk.”

“ _Lena_ ,” Fedya hissed.

“We won’t hurt him, granted you agree to cooperate with us.”

Now Anatole looked panicked again. She caught his eye, just for a moment, and nodded her head ever so slightly. A reassurance and a promise.

“I’ll give you the money in the safe and your choice of the cars,” she said.

“Look at this. She’s trying to negotiate,” Yuri said to Volkov.

“Don’t care about any of that, sweetheart,” Volkov said. “We’ve already given you our terms.”

Smiling coldly, Yuri grabbed the backrest of Anatole’s chair and tipped it back, just enough that his feet couldn’t find the floor as they scuffled for purchase. “It’s your choice. We’re fine either way.”

“If I agree to come with you, you’ll leave him alone?”

Fedya whipped around to glare at her. “You can’t be serious.”

“Scout’s honor,” said Yuri.

Hélène closed her eyes and sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Whatever you want.”

“No, Lena,” Fedya snarled. “ _Think_ about this, dammit.”

“After,” she continued, ignoring Fedya, “I know that my brother is safe. And the girl. Dolokhov too.”

“Of course,” Volkov said smoothly. “Smart girl.”

The hand on her arm tightened.

“Let go, Fedya,” she snapped.

“Lena—”

“It doesn’t matter. Let go of me.”

Fedya’s eyes went wide. Almost unconsciously, as if in a trance, he dropped her wrist.

Volkov pointed his gun at Fedya. “Now, get back.”

With obvious reluctance, he took a few shuffling steps back into the hallway.

“And you,” Yuri said, nodding at Hélène. “Over here.”

Hélène gulped. Was this how Natasha had felt, she wondered, that day at the bank? Was this what it was like to be bullied with the business end of a pistol?

Well, she supposed, she couldn’t say she hadn’t had this coming.

Slowly, more dazed than deliberate, her feet moved forwards until she was in reach, and Yuri grabbed her arm.

“How much do you think we’ll get for her?” he said, snapping her out of her thoughts.

Volkov considered Hélène like a coyote eyeing roadkill. “Five hundred, at least. God knows you can’t put a price on ending a legacy though.”

Hélène tensed. Her eyes darted back to Fedya, still standing in the doorway, his face dark with fury.

And then, without a word of warning, Fedya booked it down the hall the way he had come.

Hélène’s heart dropped to her toes.

“Pity, that,” said Yuri. “Didn’t even put up a fight. So much for chivalry, I guess.”

“Let’s get going,” Volkov said. “I’ll grab the girl, and you and Miss Kuragina head to the car.”

Yuri must have anticipated that she would put up a fight at some point, because when she dug her heels into the floor, he hoisted her up by her waist, leaving her feet scrabbling for purchase. Anatole made another muffled noise and thrashed in his seat.

“Enough of that,” said Volkov. He drew his gun and levelled it against Anatole’s cheek.

A horrible cry of terror tore from Hélène’s throat. She pulled uselessly against Yuri, more driven by fear than anything approaching common sense.

“No!” she shouted. “This isn’t what I agreed to!”

Volkov shot her an irritated glance. “Yuri, shut her up, would you?”

Then from beyond the room, from towards the front of the house, there came a barrage of sound that made the room freeze.

“What the hell was that?” said Volkov.

Their answer came in the form of a howling police siren and a chorus of barking dogs and mens voices, a car tire screeching to a brake, and the sudden collective realization that they had unwelcome company.

“Fuck,” breathed Hélène.

“Bezukhov must’ve ratted!” said Yuri.

“ _Shit_ ,” Volkov hissed.

Fedya came thundering back down the hallway not even a second later, holding his revolver in one hand.

A stray shot shattered a window somewhere in the front of the house, and Natasha shrieked.

“Go!” Fedya barked. “Move, Lena!”

That, not the bullet, not the scream, was what snapped her back to reality. Hélène’s elbow shot back and caught Yuri in the nose. She felt something crack, and then the hand on her wrist fell loose.

“Fuck!” hollered Yuri.

She ducked low, dodged away from his grasp, and shot towards Fedya with all the frantic speed of a jackrabbit. Fedya grabbed her hand and yanked her towards the door.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Yuri reach for his belt, but then Fedya pulled, hard, and a second later she was stumbling into the corridor, down the hall, into the kitchen. Her head whipped in every which way. A loud buzzing filled the space between her ears.

“Tolya,” she gasped.

Fedya’s grip still hadn’t loosened. His eyes were wide, the tendons of his neck and forearms straining like steel cables.

“We can’t help him if we’re shot,’ he snapped.

“No, Fedya, we—”

“Car,” he said. “Have to get to a car.”

Still holding her wrist, he started off towards the front door. They heard men shouting up ahead, and Fedya quickly pulled her into a side hallway.

“I’m not leaving Tolya behind,” said Hélène, planting her feet.

“For fuck’s sake—”

“They’re going to kill him.”

“And they’ll kill us too if we don’t run!”

A bang against the wall. A creak in the floorboards. A door slamming open. They jumped in tandem, as if they had been jolted with electricity.

“We have to go back!”

Fedya turned to her, fire burning in his eyes, and Hélène felt her pulse hammering in her throat. “Dammit, Lena, we don’t have time to—”

 _BANG_.

* * *

 

Yuri and Volkov, almost unsurprisingly, had followed Hélène and Fedya’s lead and bolted, leaving behind the two other occupants of the room tied to their respective seats. The immediate conclusion Natasha had drawn was this:

“Oh, God, we’re gonna to die here.”

Anatole, who had been remained perfectly still since Volkov had leveled a gun to his face, didn’t seem to have listened to her at all.

Natasha turned to him. Her lip curled in disgust. “I’m going to die in a dusty old house with _you_ of all people.”

Not a peep. Not even a glance in her direction.

“I was supposed to die a little old lady surrounded by my great-grandchildren,” she continued. “This wasn’t how my life was meant to end. They’ll never find my body. I won’t get a proper funeral. I can’t die before I can even start a family.”

Again, he ignored her.

Natasha swung her leg out and tried to kick his chair. “Do something!”

It must have been that kick, that furious, enraged wiggle, that shifted and pulled at the ropes until she felt something go slack, and suddenly her right arm was free.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, eyes wide. “They—they didn’t even tie it properly!”

At that, Anatole’s head finally snapped up.

Natasha gritted her teeth. With another shimmy, her left arm came loose as well. She grinned, twisting and writhing until she could slip the ropes over her head and kick the chair back and stand to her feet.

Anatole made a muffled noise of surprise. Or perhaps awe. That was right, Natasha thought. He should have been impressed by her, since all he had done so far was talk them into trouble.

Come to think of it, it wasn’t as if he had ever done anything for her. It would have been so much easier to run on her own. Less time to dawdle in this awful place. Less risk.

But then she made the mistake of glancing at Anatole’s face, and her heart sank in pity. He looked so lost and terrified, just as Hélène and Fedya had looked.

Perhaps the enemy had changed.

Natasha sighed and sank back onto her heels, picking at the knot that bound him.

“They did a better job on yours,” she said as her fingers worked nimbly.

Anatole shouted something indecipherable again.

“I can’t understand you when you’re talking like that!” she snapped. “Jesus, Anatole, I’m—oh, wait, sorry.” Flushed and embarrassed, she reached up and untied the rag. Anatole spat it out and heaved in a long gulp of air.

“ _Shit_ ,” he said.

Her hand slipped and pulled. The knot went tighter.

“Ah, fuck,” he snapped. “Careful.”

“You know, a _thank you_ would be nice.”

The knot gave just as one of her fingernails did. Natasha hissed and quickly brought her finger to her mouth where her hangnail had torn.

“Hurry up!”

Her eyes darted over towards the door.

“Don’t you dare,” he hissed. “Don’t you even _think_ about leaving—”

“Jesus Christ,” she grumbled, and resumed away at the ropes. “It’s nice, seeing how much you trust—”

Something from behind the wall went _bang_ , and Natasha startled.

“There’s someone coming,” Anatole said.

Natasha turned back to the rope. “Goddammit.”

“Tasha, there’s—”

“It’s a hallway away.”

“You have to work faster.”

“I’m trying!”

With a tearing sensation, the ropes finally went slack. Natasha shot to her feet and pulled him free. His arms were shaking almost too violently to hold.

“We have to go,” she said, starting off to the door, tugging him along. “Come on!”

Anatole stumbled initially over his own feet as they scurried into the hall.

“Where’s the door?” she said. “We need to get out.”

“Wait,” Anatole said weakly. “Lena and Fedya…”

“For God’s sake, where’s the—?”

Natasha froze in her tracks as her thoughts stuttered to a halt, and the rest of her sentence trailed off with it. Anatole was in a moment later, slower than her. He halted to a panicked dead-end shuffle.

Ivan. He and Anatole had frozen into mirrored images of each other, wide-eyed and petrified with fright, the difference being an inch or so of height and a short black pistol clumsily perched in Ivan’s hands.

“Ivan?” Anatole said.

Ivan blinked. “Where did everyone go?”

Dear God. He was just as lost as they were.

More footsteps thundered above her head. The gun in Ivan’s hands clicked, as if a nervous instinct.

“Look,” Anatole said, in a voice that was clearly struggling to remain calm, “we’re not your enemies. We’re trying to get out, same as you. Just put the gun down.”

“I can’t,” Ivan said shakily. “If they catch us running, they’re gonna be pissed.”

“Not if you’re quick—”

He was cut off by a loud _bang_ from the hallway that seemed to rattle the house in its foundation. Ivan startled, hands stiff, and then there came a loud popping sound that made them recoil.

Anatole staggered backwards, white in the face, with a sharp gasp. Natasha reacted instinctively and grabbed his arm, yanking him back into the next room. Without hesitating, she slammed the door shut behind her and propped a chair under the knob for good measure. She didn’t recognize this room. There was a door leading off to the porch, and another back into the hallway.

“Shit,” Anatole said numbly. “Hurts.”

“Is there a road out the back?”

“My shoulder,” he gasped.

Natasha clamped a hand over his mouth when the floorboards overhead began to creak again. Somewhere down the hallway, there came the sound of gunfire and men shouting.

“We need to get out,” she whispered. “You have to suck it up for now.”

“Where…?”

“Porch. Outside. Anywhere. Can you make it?”

Anatole nodded and gritted his teeth.

Together they staggered out to the rear porch, Natasha half-dragging, half-holding his weight. From the road they heard men shouting, car tires screeching and stray gunshots. Natasha pressed them flat to the fall as a beat-up black car rounded the corner of the house.

The tires screeched as they braked, dislodging grass and clumps of mud. Natasha flinched and pulled Anatole tighter against her.

 “Get in!” Hélène yelled, leaning out the side of the driver’s seat. Fedya sat, or rather, lay shotgun.

Anatole yelped as Natasha pulled him towards the car and yanked him into the backseat after her. She shoved him onto his back and crouched down so that they were both hidden from the rearview mirror. They panted hard, faces flushed and hands shaking with adrenaline.

“Shit,” Anatole said vaguely, as if he wasn’t too sure about what the word’s exact meaning was.

Natasha collapsed to the floor and patted him on the forearm. “You’re alright.”

The car shot forwards like a bullet fired from a gun, through the pitiful excuse for a backyard, ripped through the whitewash picket fence as if it were tissue paper and sent planks of wood and splinters flying into the air. Then Hélène turned the wheel sharply, and the car swerved with it until they were facing the road again, but in the wrong direction. She slammed her foot onto the gas. The engine gave a horrid groan and grating sound as they barrelled over the sun-dry grass.

A few miles down the road, Hélène turned to face the backseat. “How is he?”

“In shock, I think,” said Natasha, when Anatole didn’t respond.

“But he isn’t bleeding out?”

Natasha craned her neck and twisted around to see. His shoulder was stained with red, but it didn’t look too frightening or gory. It had probably just clipped him.

“No,” she said.

“Then we can deal with it later.”

Fedya groaned as they hit a bump in the road. Natasha glanced at him and swallowed a wave of revulsion as she took in the dark stain that had spread to the carseat.

“Is he alright?”

“He got hit by one of the sheriffs. Right in the shoulder blade.”

One of the sheriffs. Natasha almost fell clean out of her seat.

“What?” she gasped.

Hélène shot her a dark-eyed look, uncertain, almost untrusting, as if she had just said something she shouldn’t have.

“Everyone was shooting,” she said finally. “I’m still not sure what was going on exactly.”

“Lena,” Fedya grunted. “Can’t go to another house. We’re compromised.”

Hélène’s hands grew tight on the wheel. For a long moment, she said nothing.

Then:

“I know somewhere they won’t find us.”


	12. The Interrogation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pierre makes a critical error.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is so short but she's setting up Big Things!
> 
> We also want to take the time to say that Andrei Bolkonsky is the only genuinely good character in this fic, and we would sincerely like to apologize to him.

In hindsight, Pierre supposed, it really had been only a matter of time before he wound up in county jail.

They had left him alone at a table—un-cuffed, thank the Lord, though he wasn’t sure how long that would last—with nothing but a glass of water, a pen, and a legal pad. The overhead light flickered in an erratic not-rhythm. Around the bulb hovered three moths, almost as tormentingly infuriating as the bulb itself, or the dry patch on his tongue, or the dampness of his hands, or the awful bass drum of his heartbeat.

When you looked at it all in perspective, it was hardly the worst way things could have ended. But it certainly wasn’t the best either.

The officers had locked the door behind them and told him to wait for the sheriff to arrive. Pierre’s stomach had dropped to the cellar, and it had remained there for the past hour and a half. The last time he had seen Andrei, fists had been thrown. He wasn’t sure what to expect of him now, nearly a year later.

He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to know.

Suddenly the door clicked open. Pierre straightened his back as his vision snapped into focus, or as much focus as it could with the filth on his glasses. There stood Andrei, drawn and exhausted-looking, the hollows beneath his eyes dark and ghoul-like. The weariness of his posture was unrecognizable, but his uniform was as crisply-pressed as the day of his promotion. If Pierre didn’t know him any better, he would have thought he had been drinking all night.

“Andrei,” he said, in a voice that tasted of copper and dust.

Those harrowing eyes turned on him, distrusting and accusatory. The look of a sheriff staring down a convict on his way to the gallows. Pierre’s skin crawled with dread. This couldn’t have been the Andrei who had shed tears of joy on his wedding day and then sobbed during the best man speech, or tended to his little sister’s scraped knee with loving patience, or sat steadfastly by Lise’s bedside until the end despite the nurses’ protests that she was still contagious.

“That’s Sheriff Bolkonsky to you,” Andrei said coldly.

Pierre gripped the ledge of the table, forgetting himself, and asked, “Is Natasha alright?”

Andrei sucked in a sharp breath. He placed one hand on the his belt as if to steady himself and steadfastly met Pierre’s eyes. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“She wasn’t there.”

Pierre’s heart sank a little further. “Yes, she was. They were keeping her hostage in the spare bedroom on the first floor.”

“Maybe they were at one point. But not for a long time. You lied to us.”

“I didn’t—no, I didn’t _lie_ ,” Pierre blubbered.

“Either you lied, or your information was horseshit. The only living people in the house were three highwaymen. They were gunned down before we could question them.”

“There were more of us,” Pierre said in a breathless rush. “Balaga. Denisov. Ivan. Yuri. Volkov. Dolokhov. There were _more_ than three.”

“Well, not anymore. We found a body upstairs. I suppose that brings the total to four.”

“She was there, Andrei,” Pierre said, his grip tightening as the room spun in dismayed circles. “Please, you have to believe me.”

“Oh, I do.”

He turned his back. Pierre craned his neck and tried to see over his shoulder as Andrei reached for something on the bench and slammed it onto the table. A bundle of filthy cloth, clumsily-folded.

“They found _this_ in one of the bedrooms,” he snapped.

Pierre flinched in his seat.

“Do you know what it is?”

Andrei’s voice was dangerously soft. Terrifying as the report of gunfire.

“N-no,” Pierre said shakily.

“I think you do, actually. Try again.”

On second thought, there was something familiar in the pattern of the fabric that he couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it was something Hélène had once worn.

“Is it…is it a dress?”

“Very observant of you.”

“I think I might’ve seen it before.”

“You did. Four days ago, to be precise.”

Pierre stared up at him in confusion. Andrei leaned in closer.

“This was Natasha’s. This was the dress she was wearing the day you kidnapped her.”

Pierre shook his head. His heart thundered in his throat, almost drowning out his own voice. “I-I didn’t kidnap her. I wasn’t—I never meant—”

“This was found in the house,” Andrei said slowly. “On the floor of the upstairs bedroom. It was covered with dust and hair. Almost as if it hadn’t been worn in a while. What can you deduce from that?”

“I know how this looks,” Pierre began.

“Well, I don’t. I’d like you to explain it to me.”

Pierre’s mouth went dry. It was a long while before he was finally able to speak again. “The ringleader,” he said weakly. “She…she gave her new clothes.”

Andrei’s knuckles tightened. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“I know how it sounds, but I swear, it’s true.”

“Do you know what it looks like to me? It looks like they hurt my wife, Pierre.”

Andrei’s voice cracked with tears as he clutched the bundle to his chest. Pierre could count on one hand the number of times he had seen his old friend cry, and Lise’s death took up the majority. Seeing it again now was like seeing a rainstorm in the Dustbowl in high summer. He pinched his thigh, hoping to startle himself out of this nightmare.

“This isn’t like Lise again,” he said dizzily. “She’s still alive, Andrei. They didn’t want to kill her, for whatever reason. She must’ve gone with them.”

Andrei’s face grew white. “Who’s ‘them’?”

“It’s the Kuragins.”

“Kraggin, as far as I’m aware of, has been dead for a while.”

“It’s his daughter,” Pierre said. “Well, the son too, but he’s useless.”

“The daughter?”

“He had kids. They’re running things now. Or trying to. They won’t last long.”

Andrei’s face was cold and blank. He lowered the dress to the table. “How did you come to work for them?”

Pierre swallowed. It went down like a mouthful of rocks, only twice as painful.

“I—it was a mistake.”

“I know that already,” Andrei said. “You’ve made a lot of mistakes.”

Pierre looked down at his hands. He hadn’t noticed until now how badly they were shaking.

“Whatever happens to her,” Andrei said, “and whatever has happened to her already, is your fault.”

Pierre gulped. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to keep her safe. I tried to help her, Andrei, I tried to take her home, I swear. They wouldn’t let me.”

“And yet you seem to have made it out intact. And alone.”

“She wouldn’t go with me, Andrei.”

“Bullshit.”

Pierre didn’t have anything to say to that.

“You ditched her, Pierre,” he continued. “You let them drag her out to the middle of God-knows-where, and the second things went belly-up, you ran and came crying back to me, and you expect me to throw you a bone for your little sob story?”

“I swear, I never meant for this to happen,” Pierre said. “You know I care about her, Andrei, you know I love Natasha too—”

Andrei slammed his palms onto the tabletop. Pierre leapt back in his seat, lifting the legs of his chair off the floor in his haste. Andrei was almost a full head shorter than him, but in that moment, he may just as well have been a mountain.

“ _Don’t_ you say her name,” he growled. “You’ve forfeited the right.”

Pierre’s bottom lip wobbled. “I’m sorry,” he said weakly.

Andrei stood back from the table, straightening his shoulders. His face was blank as a mask, but his eyes burned with cold fury. Pierre swallowed again. This time, it went down like a lump of lead, cold and sinking.

“You had better hope that nothing happens to her,” he snarled. “I’ll see you hanged as an accomplice if she’s hurt, I swear, God as my witness.”

Pierre shuddered. “I know where all of their hideouts are,” he offered, his voice little more than a whisper. “She might be there.”

Andrei looked as if he had just tasted something poisonous. “You can tell them to the constable. I can’t stand to look at you anymore.”

He left the dress on the table behind him as he left and slammed the door shut. Pierre found himself transfixed by a patch of stitching that had been ripped, where the thread had begun to fray to nothing and the fabric itself was dusted with splinters and flecks of red and stray black hairs.

Now, there was nothing but him and the wall and the table and the flickering light and the moths and the faint _tip-tip_ of the water leaking in from the ceiling.


	13. The Delineation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Natasha makes some very bad decisions and Anatole absolutely does not help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be advised that this chapter has some pretty graphic medical stuff, incl. an improvised cauterization! (spot the two authors who are not doctors) 
> 
> We love nat but she is clueless. We love anatole considerably less and he is a snake.

Hélène brought them to a yellow cottage a few hours down the road. It was late afternoon now, and the Sun was beating down on the horizon, and the temperature had taken a sharp dip just south of comfort. She parked behind the house, in the middle of a tiny, scrubby patch of lawn. Smaller than the first house. Older-looking too.

Natasha looked up the to roof, drawn by the gleam of copper on the weather vane, and saw that the attic window had been smashed in, the casement rotted and creaky. Dread sank into her gut. More unnerving, somehow, than anything else she had seen that day.

Anatole raised his head, still pale. “Lena, where are we?” he asked.

Hélène waved him down, hopping out of her seat. “Get him, Natasha, would you?”

They staggered around to the back porch two by two, Hélène and Natasha holding Fedya and Anatole upright respectively. The smell of sweat and blood was sickening. Hélène pushed the door open with her hip. They were in a kitchen now, though had it not been for the sink, Natasha wouldn’t even have called it a shed. On one wall, a smashed-in window, and on the other, a shelf hanging by two screws. There was a large wooden table, like a butcher’s block, tucked into the corner, but no tables or light fixtures. The only illumination came from the fading sunlight and a single bare bulb screwed into the ceiling.

“Are you alright?” Natasha said, jostling Anatole’s shoulder.

Anatole gave an unconvincing laugh. His eyes went unfocused. “Oh, really, it’s nothing. A little scratch.”

Natasha took hold of his wrists. His skin was clammy and cold to the touch, and she could feel him trembling through his shirtsleeves. “You should lie down. I think you’re going to faint.”

“Faint? Me? I’m p-perfectly fine,” he said, even as his face went grey. “I just get a little lightheaded at the s-sight of blood, that’s—”

Before he could finish, his legs went slack, and he pitched to the side. Natasha caught him without even thinking. Gently, she braced an arm across his back and lowered him to the ground. He didn’t even flinch when his bad shoulder rolled against the floor.

“And there he goes,” muttered Hélène.

Natasha placed one hand on the underside of his jaw, the other at his throat, and felt for a pulse.

“Anatole,” she said. “Hey, are you with me? Anatole? Can you talk to me?”

Anatole mumbled something incoherent under his breath.

“He’s not waking up,” Natasha said, panic rising in her chest.

“He’s just fainted,” said Hélène, whose legs were beginning to shake under Fedya’s unconscious weight. “Just prop his feet up and he’ll come to eventually.”

“I can’t feel a pulse.”

“He has a pulse, sweetheart, he’s breathing fine. But Fedya’s not in good shape. I have to take care of this. Please, just—just stay here.”

“I can’t feel a pulse!” she shrieked.

 As if in disagreement, Anatole let out an irate-sounding groan.

“See? He’s making noise,” Hélène said. “Completely fine. Just prop him up for now. He’ll start complaining soon and you’ll wish he’d stayed asleep.”

Fedya moaned and slumped down. Hélène staggered under his weight and stumbled out of the room, swearing under her breath.

Natasha watched them go with rising panic and the sinking realization that she had no goddamn idea where to go from here, and Anatole’s sleeve was still red, and he was no closer to waking now than he had been five seconds ago.

Sonya would have known what to do. She had splinted and set more broken and twisted limbs and appendages than Natasha could count. Determined, level-headed, clever Sonya. She would have tied on her nurse’s apron and detached her mind from reality and let her hands go on autopilot and gotten to work and had the whole thing sorted out in five minutes flat.

Natasha took Anatole by the shoulders and said, “Can you answer me?”

Anatole hummed in response, something weak and non-committal. Awake, she supposed. Or something close to it.

“What day of the week is it?” she asked.

“Hell if I know,” he mumbled.

“Do you remember who I am? You know my name, right? You—Anatole, _listen_ —” His eyes had begun to drift shut until she patted his cheek again. “I need you to listen to me. Kay?”

“Stop s-slapping.”

The was all she got of him before his eyes slid shut again.

Natasha’s mind switched into panic. Sternum rub. Sonya had mentioned something about that once or twice. Something about unconscious people, or unresponsive people, or something along those lines. She had never tried it before, hadn’t even seen it done in person, didn’t know whether or not it would do any good.

But it couldn’t hurt to try.

Quickly, as fast as her shaking fingers would allow her, she unbuttoned down the front of his shirt and then pulled the rest of it apart when it refused to give. With her knuckles, she rubbed firmly down his breastbone.

Anatole shot upright a second later with a sudden, gasped, “Fucking hell!”

Natasha pulled her hand back and sat up straighter. “Anatole!”

His eyes were wild for a moment, until they saw where he as, who he was with, and he slumped back to the floor, rubbing his chest tenderly. “That _hurt_.”

“I don’t care as long as you’re awake.”

Natasha hauled him upright, ignoring his pained yelp of protest, and nodded her head in the direction of the table.

“Think you can make it there?”

Anatole looked dismayed. “I think so,” he said, with little conviction.

Not on his own, evidently, and Natasha wasn’t bold enough to let him try. With some difficulty, they navigated towards the table. Anatole slumped against it while Natasha heaved his legs onto the table, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“I don’t think it’s bleeding anymore,” she said.

“Does it look infected?”

“I don’t know,” she said, frowning. “I’m not a doctor.”

Anatole sighed. He had been down this road before, she could tell. If it was meant to ease her nerves, it only had the opposite effect. “Is it a weird color?”

“Just…red.”

“Do you see a bullet?”

Natasha gently tugged at the sleeve. The fabric had stiffened with dried blood, too dark and thick to see through, almost as if it had glued itself to his skin. Her eyes went wide again. “Oh, Jesus,” she said, biting her lip. “I think I’m gonna have to cut your sleeve off.”

Anatole’s face, for the second time that day, went white as a sheet. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I can’t see a thing. It’s all congealed.”

“I could just take my shirt off.”

“That’s not gonna un-stick it from your skin.”

“Oh, Jesus,” he echoed, letting his head slump back down to the tabletop. “I liked this shirt a lot.”

“You still have your pocket knife, don’t you?”  

Anatole propped himself up on his elbows and made a move to slide off the table, but she pushed down on his chest until he went limp again.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she said.

“To the nearest hospital,” he wheezed. “Where I can get a proper doctor who won’t gut me like a fish.”

“You’re not going anywhere. Now, lie down and shut the hell up.”

Anatole went still.

“Where’s your knife?”

“I thought I was supposed to shut the hell up,” he snipped.

Natasha huffed. “Now’s not the time to be a smartass.”

“Back pocket,” he grunted. “But it’s on my bad side. I dunno if I can reach—”

Natasha had already shoved her hand into his pocket. Anatole gritted his teeth and lifted his hips off the table, but she came up empty.

“Are you sure it’s—?”

“You know,” he said, pale again, “if you wanted to cop a feel, you coulda just _asked_ —”

Natasha nearly slapped him across the face. “Is this some sort of joke to you?”

Anatole laughed dizzily. “Of course it is. Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, and—ah, fuck, watch the shoulder!”

“Then stop wriggling so much,” she snapped.

At last her fingers closed around the knife handle. On the hilt was an engraving: _V_. _S_. _K_.

“These initials aren’t yours,” she said.

“My dad’s,” Anatole grunted.

Natasha flicked it open and stared with morbid fascination. The blade gleamed under the dim flicker of the lightbulb like a shard of glass. It looked almost new.

“Oh, God. You’re gonna kill me with that thing.”

“I’m trying to help you here,” she said sternly. “Have a little faith. I used to carve up the turkey every Christmas and Thanksgiving. I know my way around knives.”

“I’m not a fucking turkey,” he gulped.

“Well, do you have any better ideas?”

“Maybe if I pass out again, you should just leave me out cold.”

“Believe me, I will,” she said.

When she cut through his shirtsleeve, the fabric came away as easily as tearing tissue paper.

“This was a nice shirt,” he said, pouting.

“There’s almost nothing here,” said Natasha, peering at the wound. “It barely nicked you.”

He was still breathing hard, still a little too pale in the face, though that was probably more to do with shock than blood loss. “I’m allowed to be sensitive. I’m the one who got _shot_.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to his shoulder. With the knife, she sawed off a few inches of skirt. It was clean enough. Hardly proper as medical bandages, but it would do.

They fell into silence as she tied it around his arm, still without a clue of what she was really supposed to be doing. But she must have done something right. Now that it was covered and no longer bleeding, the whole thing looked a lot less frightening.

“I think it looks alright,” she said, smoothing her hand over the makeshift bandages.

Anatole sighed and turned his head to face her, his cheek flush with the tabletop. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

It dawned on her, in a curious moment of awareness, how helpless he was, now that she was the one with the knife, now that he was tired and flat on his back and so trusting. She could have hurt him in any way she chose. She could have left him back at the house and tossed him to the wolves.

Even more peculiar was the realization that she no longer really wanted any of those things.

“I know I haven’t done much to make you like me,” he said quietly. “But thank you.”

“Couldn’t let them hurt you before I got a shot in,” Natasha muttered.

He cracked a smile at that. On instinct, she reached up to brush a clump of sweat-slicked hair back from his forehead.

“Does it still hurt?” she asked.

“A little.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not the one who shot me.” Anatole snickered. “Ivan, of all people. Never thought the kid had it in him. Like being shot by a deer.”

“It’s nice to see you’re already so flippant about this.”

“Please, it’s not as if you were worried.”

Natasha’s eyes flicked down to the ground.

“You were worried about me?” he said quietly.

Absentmindedly, without thinking, she brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. The sort of thing she might have done to Andrei, after a long day at work.

“You had a gun to your head,” she said. “Of course I was worried.”

“It’s happened before,” he said dully. “When I was sixteen. After my old man died. They put me in a car and told Lena they’d kill me if she didn’t turn herself over to them. Fedya got me out.”

“That’s horrible.”

Anatole shrugged. “Realities of the trade, I guess.”

“But it’s always been because of your sister?”

“Sometimes Papa,” he said quietly. “If he thought that marks would like us.”

“Oh, Anatole,” Natasha sighed.

He rubbed at his eyes with his good hand. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I never usually talk about this.”

“It’s alright,” she said gently. “You can if you want to.”

“I thought I was going to die. It’s never been that close before.” Anatole blinked, clearing his eyes. “You saved my life, you know. I owe you for that.”

Natasha blushed. “No, you don’t.”

He took her hand. His skin was cold but soft. “I do. I really do. You were so brave. Braver than I ever could be.”

It was true, Natasha thought. She could admit that much. It was worth taking pride in, at least. She wasn’t sure what had come over her in the house, but whatever was left of it was still running through her veins, burning wild and hot.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

All the tension had gone out of his shoulders. Natasha sat back in her seat, watching the rise and fall of his chest, steady and slow now, not frantic as it had been earlier. There was something peaceful, almost angelic in the way he lay there. The lighting was dim, but every part of him still gleamed silver and gold.

It had been a while, Natasha mused, since she had last seen a man this vulnerable and open to her. It was the sort of thing she would have read in one of her novels.

Almost without thought, she leaned down and kissed his cheek.

Anatole’s eyelashes fluttered. “Natasha?”

Natasha pulled away in mortification. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, covering her mouth. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said softly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’ve wanted you to do that since the day we met.”

She laughed. “Even after I nearly sliced your throat out with a hatpin?”

He shrugged. “Wasn’t an incredibly sharp pin. And besides”—he tilted his head to the side—“can’t say I’ve ever had a captor so easy on the eyes.”

Natasha flushed. “You know, you’re not so bad yourself.”

Anatole smiled and leaned up, just as she leaned in. She shuddered as their lips met, and a warm spark ran through her chest. Before she even realized what was happening, she had crawled onto the table with her forearms bracketing his head. Anatole slung his good arm around her waist, pulling her closer until their chests were flush with each other. Natasha felt her heart thundering in her chest in a way that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

She pushed herself upright, and Anatole bent his knees and pulled his feet onto the table until she was more or less leaning back against his thighs. Her hands lingered at the hem of his shirt. Anatole chuckled and smoothed his hands down her back, allowing them to rest on her hips.

“This isn’t right,” she whispered. “We can’t.”

Anatole leaned up and kissed her cheek. “We can. I’d like to.”

“Anatole…”

“I’m all yours,” he said, peppering her face with kisses. “Anything you want.”

“I’m married.”

“What difference does it make?”

“A huge one,” she said, but allowed him to continue kissing her throat.

“He isn’t here,” Anatole breathed. His hands ran up and down her back. “So you should stop worrying. Just enjoy yourself.”

Natasha drew back and held his jaw in her hands. “Why should I?”

“Because life is short,” he said. “You have to take what you can out of it, every scrap of fun that you can get your hands on, because it’ll be over before you realize it. We could have died today, and I know I’d regret never having _this_. Wouldn’t you?”

Natasha hesitated.

Natasha lunged.

* * *

 

The world swam in and out of black.

Pain had knocked Fedya’s senses out of his head. He had felt pain before, sure, but nothing like this, nothing this awful or demanding or soul-rattling. It felt as if someone had pressed a white-hot poker to his shoulder, as if they were still holding it there now, as if every ragged step he took twisted it deeper and harder into his skin.

Distantly, he heard a voice echoing through his ears, oddly familiar. But the words were too numb for his scattered mind to parse.

When his sight returned, he was sitting backwards in a chair with his chin against the backrest, and his skin crawled with cold and sweat.

“Fedya?” someone said tentatively. “Are you with me?”

Fedya turned his head in the general direction of the voice. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a pained groan.

“Shit,” said the voice.

Hélène. He may not have known where he was, or even if he was alive or not but he knew that much at least.

“I need you to wake up,” she said.

“Awake,” he finally managed to say.

A hand on his cheek. “I’ll be right back, alright? Just don’t move.”

“Right,” he wheezed.

One second she was there, and the next, she wasn’t. Fedya blinked, clearing the daze from his eyes as his vision returned.

He was in a small bedroom, perhaps twenty feet square. A rusted metal bedframe in one corner with a torn red quilt. Chipped walls painted yellow. An oak dresser, and a small window with the curtains drawn. Not a safehouse. Not one he recognized.

Too confused and exhausted to even coherently process that, Fedya inhaled through clenched teeth and screwed his eyes shut, fighting to remain conscious. But he could feel his mind wandering out of his body, threatening to drift off.

A door creaked open behind him. Fedya tensed at once.

“We’re safe here,” came Hélène’s voice. “Nobody knows about this place.”

Something brushed against his side. The pain flared back. He hadn’t realized how numb it had gone.

“Fuck!” he howled, on reflex.

“Is it your back?”

“Right shoulder blade.”

“Fuck,” she hissed. “Did it hit your spine?”

He shook his head. A whiplash of fire shot down his back at the movement.

“Stay with me, Fedya. Do you know where you are?”

“No,” he snapped.

“But can you describe it to me?”

“Shitty-lookin’.”

He heard her exhale in frustration. Hélène was not a woman meant for comforting others. She would have made a better executioner than a nurse.

Load of good that would do him now.

“Let’s try something else,” she said slowly. “What do you smell? How do you feel?”

“Like shit,” he groaned. “It hurts.”

Behind him, he heard liquid sloshing in a bottle and a metallic latch being swung either open or shut.

“You shouldn’t have turned your back,” she said. “That was fucking stupid.”

“You’re impossible,” he growled. “A ‘thank you’ would be nice.”

“ _Thank you_ ,” she snapped. “Now will you let me look at it?”

Without waiting for his response, Hélène yanked his shirt over his head.

Fedya let out a pained yelp. “Dammit, Hélène!”

“Oh, fuck,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s bad,” she whispered. “It looks really, really bad.”

Fedya frowned, craning his neck to try to look at her. “Lena?”

“Fuck,” she said again. “I’m gonna have to clean this out or it’ll get infected.”

The tendons in his neck strained like steel cables as he clenched his jaw. “Alright. Let’s get it over with.”

“This might sting.”

“Stop blabbering and just—” Fedya hissed in pain and cringed away when she poured the whiskey over his back. “Fucking _hell_!”

“I warned you,” she snapped, and took a swig from the bottle.

“Pass it here,” he grunted. He held his hand out expectantly. “I need it more than you do.”

Hélène took another gulp for good measure before handing it to him.

“Greedy,” he said. “Look how little you’ve left me.”

This protest was cut off with a sharp grunt when she prodded at the bullet wound.

“ _Damnit_ , Lena, knock that off.”

“Am I gonna have to take this out?” Her voice was low and scared.

Fedya stiffened. “Probably,” he said.

“I’ll try to make it fast,” she said. “Do you’ve your knife handy?”

He fished about in his pocket and handed it to her.

Hélène pared the blade out of its casing. “This is filthy. Jesus, Fed, do you want to get gangrene?”

“ _Clean_ it, then.”

“Jesus,” she said again, and wiped the blade on the hem of her skirt.

“You’re gonna have to just jimmy it out. Try to make it fast, but don’t rush.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Fedya I can’t do this.”

“You have to.”

“What if I fuck it up?”

“Leave it in and it might just get infected.” He shook his head drily, his knuckles white. The black was eating at the corners of his vision again. “Life’s fulla tough choices, sweetheart.”

Hélène’s grip tightened spasmodically. “Alright. Are you ready?”

“Are you gonna do that thing where you count to five and start on three?”

“Tell me when you’re ready.”

“Wait, get my belt.”

“What?”

“I’m scared I’m gonna flinch,” he said quietly. “Please.”

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she sighed. Her hands reached around the back of the chair to undo his buckle. Had the circumstances been any different, he may have considered making a vulgar joke. But then she had the belt loosened, then between his teeth, and he bit down till the leather groaned and waited for the worst.

“One,” Hélène said, in a shaking voice, “two, three, four, five—”

The pain flashed, hot for a moment, then blacked the edges of his vision until he felt almost nothing at all. He wished he could have passed out then, because when it returned, it was with a blinding vengeance, burning and freezing all at once, grounded by a deep ache that burrowed into his shoulder.

“It’s out,” Hélène said at last.

Fedya took in a shuddering breath. His jaw fell slack, and the belt dropped to the floor. “Now you’ll have to close it up.”

Hélène looked at her handiwork appraisingly. “I was never much good with a needle and thread,” she said.

“Not that,” he grunted. “Burn it shut. I don’t want it to get infected.”

Hélène sucked in a deep breath and pulled away. “Fedya…”

“Now or never, Lena. Before I lose my nerve. I’ll talk you through it. It’s gonna be fine. I’ve seen guys do this before.”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“Start by heating up the knife. You have your lighter? Yes, like that. Good.”

Her thumb fiddled with the switch. “My hands are shaking.”

“S’alright. Just focus.”

“Dammit,” she hissed.

“You’re going to burn me either way,” Fedya said wryly. “Just get on with it.”

“I can’t, I can’t—”

“Lena,” he said sternly, so loudly that she flinched, “we don’t have any choice here.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Pull it together,” he said.

She sucked in a sharp breath. Her hands stopped shaking.

“Do it in bursts. Only a few seconds at a time. And do it quick. Got it?”

Hélène nodded, clutching the knife a little tighter.

“It’s going to be fine. Just don’t lose your head.”

“Okay,” she muttered. “I’m gonna do it now.”

Fedya reached for the belt himself this time and bit down again. He gave a quick nod.

She didn’t count to five this time.

The belt muffled the most of his scream. Fedya wished he could have passed out, but the heat seared through his back and into his head, like a burst of nervous energy.

“Hey!” Hélène said sternly. She cupped his face in her hands. “Still with me? Fedya? Fed? Do you know where you are?”

Fedya took a deep, shuddering breath and spat the belt out. “Shitty abandoned cottage,” he mumbled.

“Can you tell me who I am?”

“Fuck off.”

“Well, you’re coherent enough to be a jackass. I’ll take that as a positive.” Something metallic clicked again. “It’s over.”

Fedya laughed softly and allowed her to brush the hair off of his forehead. “That was nothin’,” he said. “Barely even stung.”

Hélène laughed too, seemingly against her will. “You’re so full of shit.”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine. How’re you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” he grunted, and went limp against the backrest of the chair.

“I’m so sorry,” she said softly.

“Not your fault.”

“I was stupid,” she whispered. “You’re hurt because of me. This is my fault.”

“It’s _not_ , Lena.”

“Shh. You should get some rest.”

Fedya attempted to rise to his feet, but the second he straightened his back, the color drained from his face and he slumped backwards. Hélène caught him before his head could smack against the wall.

“What did I tell you?”

“Alright, alright,” he snapped. “Help me.”

Hélène staggered under his weight, but the two of them somehow managed to stumble over to the bedroom across the hall without incident. The mattress smelled of mothballs. A chorus of springs creaked in protest as he sank down.

Fedya groaned and rolled onto his side. “It hurts.”

Hélène kissed his forehead and ran a hand over his sweat-slick forehead. “Don’t worry,” she purred. “I’m a good doctor. I’ll take good care of you.”

Fedya leaned into her hand. The sting had petered out into cold numbness, or perhaps only it was his exhaustion that had sapped everything—his energy, his breath, even the pain.

“That’s right,” Hélène murmured. “You’re okay now.”

A lie so confidently delivered they almost both believed it.

“You’re very brave,” she continued.

“I know I am,” Fedya grunted. “I just let you dig a fucking bullet out of me.”

Her fingers migrated to his scalp. “Won’t happen again, I promise.”

“It won’t. That’s the last time I take a bullet for you, Kuragina, I mean it.”

Hélène kissed the nape of his neck. “I know, sweetheart.”

There followed a long silence, punctuated only by their breathing.

“You’re shaking,” she said eventually.

“I’m tired. That’s all.”

Hélène laid a hand against his forehead. “Do you feel cold?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I told you I’m fine.”

“Alright, you’re fine,” she said. “But can I make you more comfortable?”

“This happened because of the girl,” he said slowly. “Because they were looking for her. Lena, we have to get rid of her. This has gone too far.”

“Hush,” she said sternly. “You need to rest.”

“No, I don’t.”

Hélène pushed down on his shoulders until he sank back onto the bed. “Yes, you do.” She grinned mischievously. “Or do I have to make you myself?”

There was no need to threaten. He had already collapsed onto his back, his eyes half-lidded and his face drawn with exhaustion. Hélène pulled the blankets over his limp form.

“Good boy,” she murmured. “Don’t you worry about any of that. Let me handle things.”

“You’re terrible.”

“You know it, lover.”

Fedya tried to sit up as she pulled away. “Where are you going?”

“I thought I should look around, maybe check on Tolya and the girl.”

Fedya visibly had to swallow his pride when he looked back up at her. “Can you stay?”

Hélène raised an eyebrow. He was about to blush and furiously back-pedal, when she kicked off her shoes and clambered into the bed. She slid under the sheets, careful not to touch against his bad shoulder. Fedya stiffened as she squirmed in behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her face against the nape of his neck.

She entwined her fingers with his and leaned forwards to brush a whisper of a kiss against his bad shoulder. He tensed for a moment, and then relaxed into her arms.

“You’re alright,” she murmured.

“I know.”

“I’ve got you.”

“I know.”

“Thank you,” she said softly. “For having my back.”

“Always.”

“This will all be over soon,” she murmured. “And then things will go back to normal.”

Fedya hummed in the back of his throat. Normal. When the hell had they ever been anything close to normal?

“We’ll go to another safehouse,” she continued. “Maybe the one by the river. We’ll stay there for a few months, lay low and get fat off the ransom money. Buy some proper booze, not the cheap crap we’ve been suffering offa.” She ran her foot up Fedya’s leg pensively. “We’ll have some time alone.”

“We’re alone now.”

“You know what I mean.”

He chuckled and placed his hand over hers. “That sounds nice.”

Hélène squeezed him closer against her chest. “Go to sleep, Fed,” she sighed. “Get some rest. You need it.”

He must have dozed off then, or passed out for a moment or two. Or a minute. Or an hour.

When he woke up, the bed was cold and Hélène was nowhere to be seen. Outside the windows it was dark. He heard cicadas chirping, felt the cold of nighttime seeping in through the walls.

Fedya rolled over onto his side, but the sheets beneath his shoulder had dried with blood. With a groan, he sat up and slowly peeled it away. Fire shot down his back again.

There on the bedside table was the bottle of whiskey Hélène had left. It was almost empty, but there were still a few drops of lurking at the bottom. Fedya grimaced as he tipped his head back and finished it off.

Maybe Hélène had had the right idea. He gave the bed a regretful look and turned to the door.

He knew what he wanted now. He was going to go for a walk, find another bottle of whiskey, and then he was going to have a word with the girl.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! We thrive off of comments and kudos! If you enjoyed, consider leaving one below!


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